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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27325930">Fireflies in the Spring</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukaeya/pseuds/tsukaeya'>tsukaeya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops &amp; Cafés, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hanahaki Disease, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Lots of Angst, Time Skips, Volleyball Dorks in Love, haikyu!! - Freeform, haikyuu!! - Freeform, hanahaki, slowburn, tsukaeya, tsukishima - Freeform, tsukishima kei - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:29:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>36,706</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27325930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukaeya/pseuds/tsukaeya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Here began the story of how a flower met a firefly and how the same story came to an end.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tsukishima Kei/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Haikyuu Angst Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fireflies in the Spring</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi~</p><p>I hope you enjoy reading this piece. It actually took me a lot of mental breakdowns to tell myself that this piece was worth publishing and worth sharing. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I haven't really been writing steadily these past weeks because I'm afraid of not living up to expectations. Also, I hope you learn a thing or two from this story.</p><p>Some parts may not be aligned with canon. I'm not the most seasoned writer as well so expect mistakes. I am growing too so please let them slide.</p><p>trigger warnings // suicide, death, blood, bullying, self-depreciation, self-harm</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h4> Evening primroses. </h4><p>They were always his favorite flower for some reason. I don’t get how a six-foot-tall volleyball player who rarely agrees to talk to people in a proper way would favor a flower like this. It was unusual, but I thought it was exactly like him. It was one of his unusual choices that in a way still made perfect sense.</p><p>Well, Tsukishima Kei probably viewed me past his lenses the same way. He probably thought spending time with me was one of his unusual choices that in a way still made perfect sense.</p><p>Probably.</p><p>I remember the first time I met him. It wasn’t vague. It wasn’t anything special. It was rather bland and boring. But knowing the person I am, how could it not be? It was in the early days of May. The day we first met was the day they had a practice match at Aoba Johsai. “I heard Karasuno is playing against you today, Akira?,” I ask Kunimi. “Obviously, Ichika.”</p><p>He rolls his eyes at me and then walks away to join Kindaichi and the others. “Hey! Ichika aren’t you supposed to be at practice in the other gym?,” Kindaichi says pointing out how I didn’t fit in the setting. “Let me pretend I’m not here because our captain asked me to observe you play,” I retort at him and he simply shoots a silly face at me.</p><p>Akira, Yutaro, and I had stuck together for the past three years. We went to Kitagawa Daiichi together and we ended up being stuck together yet again at Seijoh. It was always part of the plan that I’d go to these two schools, after all, wouldn’t it be troublesome for my parents to drive me and Tooru to two different schools? Being in Tooru’s shadow was always the plan.</p><p>“Ichi-san, if we win treat us to ice cream,” Kindaichi smirks as we watched the players of Karasuno walk through the doors of the gymnasium. “Let’s see about that,” I joke knowing that my brother wouldn’t really be of much use knowing he was injured. I sat back at the bleachers, keeping my knees up to my chin, and began to watch the game unfold. That’s when I first saw him.</p><p>That was when I first laid my eyes on the cold middle blocker of Karasuno High School. Tsukishima Kei. And in a sudden moment, he too looked back at me. Oikawa Ichika.</p><p>And there, began the story of how a flower met a firefly.</p>
<hr/><p>I was initially there to take notes for my team. I was supposed to help strategize by observing how others would do the same. But the moment the golden-brown orbs crossed my light brown orbs, I had lost focus. I was sidetracked. But he wasn’t. They crossed for a moment and they continued to look ahead in their own line.</p><p>Who was I anyway to be able to catch anyone’s eye?</p><p>The game progressed as I watched from the bleachers. I hated being on the sidelines, but with a brother like Oikawa Tooru, this was the norm. I would stick to what I had at hand. Observe the gameplay. I watched from afar, but time and time again I would find myself fixated on Karasuno’s tall middle blocker.</p><p>He was smart. He knew how to control the game, he just refused to do so at all. He probably would rather choose to die rather than help his team win by taking control of the game. He looked like the type to leave you with a few open wounds and even laugh.</p><p>He definitely was.</p><p>Tooru entered the second set as Karasuno was at match point. Perfect timing. He smirked as he served, and it went towards the person who my eyes followed. He couldn’t receive it, and in turn, that earned my brother two service aces just by targeting him. I didn’t want to call him weak, but there was room for him to grow. There was plenty of room.</p><p>At the end of the match, Aoba Johsai had lost. “Tooru,” I say calling my brother who was talking to Iwaizumi. “What is my little sister doing here?,” he says in a sarcastic tone pertaining to the fact I probably had my own practice to go to. I slam the notepad in his face and he laughs. “Tobio-san, look who’s here,” he says calling over Kageyama.</p><p>Kageyama looks at us and I looked at him too. I couldn’t bring myself to show expression at all. Was I supposed to smile? Was I meant to laugh? Was I meant to get angry at Kageyama? </p><p>You probably wouldn’t believe it but Kageyama Tobio was one of the people I was closest to.</p><p>Was.</p><p>We stared at each other in silence, both not knowing what to do. It had been a while ever since the incident that drove us further apart. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it. I did the same, with the intent of actually speaking to him. “Ka-,” I say and was immediately cut off. “Oi, King hurry up or we’re leaving,” said the middle blocker I had my eyes on. “Tsukishima,” says a shorter boy with green hair tugging at the blonde.</p><p>Tsukishima.</p><p>“See you, Ichika,” was all Kageyama said to me as he walked away once more. “See you, Tobio,” I say whispering to myself. Tooru starts to wave his hands around me in the most animated way. “He’s not something to be sad about. You’ll be a better setter than him, avenge me,” he dramatically says which cheered me up. “Oikawa stop pressuring Ichika,” Iwaizumi says disapproving of my brother’s words. “It’s fine. I am the better setter between me and Tobio.”</p><p>It was fine. The pressure was fine. In order to produce diamonds, there is pressure. A lot of it.</p><p>I roll my eyes at my brother and Iwaizumi bickering again. I walk away to go to Kunimi and Kindaichi who looked kind of mad too. “The King uses ‘we’ with Karasuno but he never did with us,” Kindaichi says mocking the way Kageyama spoke. “He and that orange-haired boy looked powerful. Gosh if only I were born a boy the three of us would be unstoppable,” I joke to them and they laugh.</p><p>Akira Kunimi, Yutaro Kindaichi, and Ichika Oikawa. It was always the three of us taking life head-on even if Kageyama was by my side. Unlike him, these two never left. “Ice cream?,” I ask them and they nod. We walk out of the school gates as we talked about the match. There was resentment in the air, and we couldn’t blame anyone but ourselves. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself.</p><p>“Ichi,” Kunimi says as he tries to put his hand behind my back. However, I was too busy talking to Kindaichi to hear his quiet plea. And out of the blue, my back felt like it had hit something. I wasn’t even quite sure how I got there but my back felt warmth. I looked behind me to see a pair of golden brown eyes staring and probably judging me behind lenses. It was him.</p><p>“Watch where you’re going.” </p><p>He glares at me and I apologize, hiding the fact that I was extremely embarrassed. “Sheesh,” he whispers as he looks away and drinks his water. Kunimi and Kindaichi laugh at me as we keep walking away. “I thought we had two genius setters at Kitagawa. I knew one of them was dumb, but Ichika you two are actually dumber than I expected,” remarks Kindaichi.</p><p>“Hey,” a cold voice calls behind me and I look back. It was him. Tsukishima. “Name,” he simply says. “Oikawa Ichika,” I say. I don’t know why it had felt natural to give him my name there and then. “Tsukishima Kei,” he says and I stare at him. I raise an eyebrow at him and he chuckles. It was an unusual choice but in a way still made perfect sense to him.</p><p>The firefly had chosen to land on the petals of a flower that hasn’t blossomed.</p>
<hr/><p>“Have you found him?,” Kindaichi asked me on the other side of the call. “Chi looked for him?,” Kunimi says laughing at me. Over the past hour since we got home, I devoted my time to searching for Tsukishima online. I could ask Tobio about him, but it was no man’s land in the space between the three of us and him. “Ah…here,” I saw pressing the key on my keyboard. “And, she’s found him.”</p><p>It was rather easy to search him up, but confirming which account he used was the harder part. “Shoot,” I said accidentally raising my voice on the call. “Ichika that better be important you don’t just scream,” Kunimi says agitated. “I may or may not have accidentally sent him a friend request,” I say trying to hide my embarrassment. </p><p>Tsukishima Kei accepted your friend request.</p><p>The phone dings as those six words light up on my laptop screen. “Akira please spike me into the void,” I say whining staring at the notification. “No. I’m too lazy to,” he says yawning behind his muffled voice. I then spent the next 30 minutes whining to them about what happened. “Therefore I conclude, Ichika is surprisingly dumber than the King,” Kindaichi teases as I spiral into a crisis.</p><p>I had avoided looking at the screen at all costs. He probably was chuckling behind his own screen at the moment. I looked desperate. It wasn’t like I liked him though. I was just curious.</p><p>And as curiosity took over me, I looked at the screen. I pushed up my glasses as my eyes widened at the short lines of text spread across my notification panel. They weren’t from friends or from my siblings spamming me. They were from someone else.</p><p>Tsukishima Kei (Sent at 8:12 PM, May 4)<br/>
[That eager to talk to me, are we?]</p><p>How presumptuous. </p><p>Oikawa Ichika (Sent at 8:51 PM, May 4)<br/>
[Um…how about no?]<br/>
[I pressed it on accident. I was curious who you were and I pressed it by mistake you just accepted it quickly. It’s not like that.]</p><p>Tsukishima Kei (Sent at 8:53 PM, May 4)<br/>
[Defensive much? Geez.]</p><p>I left him on read for the next few hours. Bickering with some stranger I met at a practice game wouldn’t really be worth my time, would it? Even if I did pour my time and investment into him, it wasn’t like he would treat me the way everyone else did. I couldn’t change his perception of me even if I did all that. Having people look at me that way would be the norm.</p><p>It was inevitable and nothing could change the way they viewed me.</p><p>Would the firefly be able to fight amongst the insects trying to drain the flower of its life?</p><p>I switched off the lights inside my room and lay on the bed. I pushed my glasses up to the bridge of my nose as I turn to the side to use my phone. A sudden ding then catches my attention as I look at the laptop screen. It lit up the darkly lit room, illuminating my face as I read the message on the screen.</p><p>Describing it this way would sound dramatic, but I’d rather not hide behind a mask for once. It felt like the first rays of sunshine kissing your face in the morning. Laying my eyes upon the text felt like the first few sips of coffee in the morning, it felt like the perfect toss to an ace and it felt nothing less than the state of etherealness. </p><p>Seeing his message felt like the moon had suddenly appeared amidst the dark clouds as if the satellite was ready to get me out of my abyss.</p><p>Tsukishima Kei (Sent 11:11 PM, May 4)<br/>
[This is weird but…Oikawa Ichika right?]<br/>
[How would you like it if we…talked? At a café…after practice?]</p><p>Oikawa Ichika (Sent 11:13 PM, May 4)<br/>
[Okay sure. My practice is until like 8 every day except Mondays so,]</p><p>Tsukishima Kei (Sent 11:15 PM, May 4)<br/>
[Then I’ll wait for you. See you. Friday next week.]</p><p>My heart fluttered for a moment. I don’t know why; I don’t know how but it just did. I would naturally turn this down but the idea of spending an evening with him felt nice. There was something in him that made me want to run towards him even if it probably would mean my demise.</p><p>For the first time in a while, the flower had planned to bloom with a single touch of a firefly.</p>
<hr/><p>Friday came and I thought he’d be joking. But nonetheless, I still tried to look presentable walking out the school gates that evening. I was walking alone, and I didn’t really expect him to be there. I walked outside with my earphones in my ears and I felt a hand grab mine. Tsukishima pulled me close to his face, crouching down to examine it. “You really do look like Oikawa.”</p><p>“Of course. I’m his sister. I’m supposed to look like that idiot,” I say as he stands back up. “Don’t use your earphones when you’re walking alone at night. You could get mugged or something,” he says taking out my earphones from my ears. “I can do it myself. Why do you care anyway?”</p><p>“Who said I cared?”</p><p>Thank you for reminding me that no one would ever love the monster I am. Of course, why would you care Tsukishima Kei? You have no reason to but yet here you are tangled into my life. So let me ask again, why do you care?</p><p>He then grabs my forearm and asks me to get onto his bike. I sat on the back, clinging onto it, afraid to touch him fearing the awkward marks of this moment would press to hard onto us that even if I chose to erase it, it would still be there. “I don’t want to get charged with a count of human endangerment, hold on tight Oikawa,” Tsukishima says smirking at me as I put my hands around his waist.</p><p>My heart was undeniably beating at an abnormally fast rate. But I knew his wasn’t. It was probably the rush of adrenaline pumping through my veins as we rode around the streets as his bicycle’s speed rose, or it was probably the feeling of being overwhelmed by Tsukishima. Either way, something had been making my heart beat so much it felt new. It felt so new that it dawned upon me then that it had been a long time since I felt this kind of thing.</p><p>I immediately let go of Tsukishima as we arrived at a library café. “I thought you wanted to cling onto me longer, Oikawa,” he says teasing me as I got off of his bike. “You wish. Stop calling me Oikawa. You’ll think of my brother every time you’re with me,” I say as I stare up at him. “Okay, Ichika,” he says rolling his eyes as we walk through the door.</p><p>It felt invigorating to have someone call me Ichika that way.</p><p>Everyone called me Ichika anyway. To avoid confusion amongst me, Tooru, and our eldest sibling. It was the norm. It wasn’t special at all. It never would even be a sign we were close, it was a way for me to break out of their shadow. Yet again, however, it was the route almost everyone walked but it felt different as he called me by my name.</p><p>We walked inside the café and sat down at a booth away from the window. We ordered our food and sat there in complete silence. “You need to talk to me about To-, Kageyama do you? Or maybe you’re trying to peek into my life and see the kind of stuff Seijoh will do for the tournaments?,” I ask realizing the suspicion of our situation. Tsukishima sneered at me. “How shallow do you think I am? I asked you out—I mean I asked for your company to get to know you. But now that you mention it, what is the deal with you and the King?”</p><p>I felt my cheeks go pink. The words ‘I asked you out—I mean I asked for your company to get to know you,’ echoed in my mind as I unconsciously stared at him. “We went to middle school together. That’s it,” I told him with my head down knowing all the memories of the incident would come in. “It doesn’t seem like that,” he says. “Okay. Something happened but I don’t trust you enough to see the scars it left on me.”</p><p>He looks up at me. I still had my head down but I could see his reactions through my peripheral vision. I was afraid of telling anyone about what caused us to drift apart. It wasn’t that I was guilty or ashamed, it was because of the fact that telling anyone that would result in them unlocking parts of my story I locked up. “Okay then, tell me when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting, this won’t be the last time anyways.”</p><p>There I had the courage to look up at him. He probably would stay for a while to get information out of me, but company wouldn’t hurt too much. I just had to avoid attachments at all costs. I would drive him anyways one day. “Yeah. This won’t be the last,” I tell him forcing a fake smile as our orders came. “You really want to stay around me? I hope you don’t regret that?,” I whisper as I stir the straw in my iced coffee.</p><p>“I can hear you. If I do regret it then so what? You’ll just like be any other person,” he says after he sips his soda. Of course, yet again I was replaceable. I always knew I was but after the incident, it crossed my mind more often. “Anyway, shouldn’t you not be drinking coffee? It’s nearly nine in the evening. Coffee causes insomnia, palpitations, nervousness, and restlessness. Don’t you want a night’s sleep?,” he sees critiquing my habits. </p><p>I felt something bloom in my heart that very moment.</p><p>I had always been treated as if I was nothing. Like I was a toy that after everyone got tired of using, would be thrown away. I was most likely overwhelmed by the concern, but it was scary to have someone care for me. “No one would care anyway if I didn’t fall asleep right?,” I tell him smirking. “I know,” he says drinking more of his soda.</p><p>“But anyway, Ichikia I’ll take you home. I dragged you here. Um…please put your number on my phone because I’d like to talk to you more. Don’t ask why,” he says shyly giving me his phone as I proceed to put in my phone number. “Tsukishima,” I call out to him. He looks at me with an eyebrow raised. “Nothing. I just want to thank you for tonight,” I smile at him.</p><p>He surprisingly smiled back. “Okay,” he says as his smile faded from his face quickly. I got on his bike and he pedaled to the front of my house. My hands were wrapped around his waist and my head was on his back the whole time. For a moment, it felt like he was even singing. “Be safe, Tsukishima. It’s really late now. Text me when you get home,” I say getting off of his bike. “Okay. Good night. I’ll be waiting for the day you tell me what happened, okay?,” he says waving at me farewell.</p><p>The firefly had stayed on the flower’s petals even if they had still refused to bloom, for the firefly said they would wait for as long it would take for the flower to feel like blooming once more.</p>
<hr/><p>And the seasons had gone by, neither of the two changed. The flower refused to bloom even as spring began to approach. The firefly had not left the petals either-even if it endangered him staying for that long. The sunrises and sunsets watched the two of them spend more time together, yet they remained like that despite it all.</p><p>But for some reason, they thought it was fine. It wasn’t the best choice, but it made them feel at ease.</p><p>“Tsukishima,” I say on the other end of the hallway as I see him walking. “Ichika,” he calls out and smiles. As I walk away after meeting his eyes, I hear footsteps that stopped right behind me. “Don’t walk away, Ichika,” I hear his voice and I turn around to meet his gaze. “Congratulations,” I say smiling at him after they had won against Wakutani Minami High School.</p><p>“Congratulations as well. You really are proving yourself to be the better,” he says cutting himself off. I stare at him blankly. “Sorry, I forgot you hate being called that. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again,” he said as I looked at him in awe.</p><p>The thing about him was that he listened. I hated talking about myself, but when I talked about myself with him it truly felt like someone was listening. Growing up, no one ever truly listened. It always felt anything but forced but with Tsukishima, that feeling was gone. He actually remembered this detail—the fact I hated being compared to Tooru or the fact they called me the ‘Better Oikawa’ as I actually seemed to do better. I wasn’t better.</p><p>I giggled at him to fade the awkwardness away. “See you later. All my games are done for today,” I tell him as I begin to walk away towards my team. His next game for today was against my brother and my best friends. Of course, I had to go with Aoba Johsai. “See you. I’ll make you cheer for me on the court,” he says smirking at me. “We’ll see.”</p><p>I took my seat amongst the others in the bleachers, camouflaging into the white and turquoise. I was near the front and sure enough, I was ready to support Tooru. “Tooru do well or else you’re buying me and Takeru ice cream,” I tease him by the sidelines. “Of course. Believe in me, will you?,” he says confidently but I could see through his mask that he was nervous.</p><p>“I always will believe in you, Tooru.”</p><p>With that, he walked away to get his head in the game. It was an intense game. They were practically fighting fire with fire as they both wanted to win. I watched their plays in detail. The way Kageyama tossed the ball was far different now. Tsukishima didn’t want to be there but at the same time, he wanted to. My brother was fighting as if his life was on the line, and it probably was.</p><p>As the second set ended, tensions were high. Tooru composed himself most of the time, but I was afraid. And that fear crept into the third set as I struggled to watch my brother and his team try to receive each ball Karasuno had gotten in. “Tooru,” I whispered trying not to let him hear me whine. I watched as Karasuno switched Tsukishima for their third-year setter, Sugawara.</p><p>I carefully watched even if I knew I couldn’t look at my brother knowing he had drained himself. “Tooru!,” I cheer for him while Hinata Shoyo runs to spike the ball. He wouldn’t hear me, but it was fine. And as he lousily received the ball, it had gone up. But in the wrong direction. He looked mortified. The last bits of life he had left was drained from him as he heard the ball hit the ground.</p><p>I heard Karasuno screaming as I could only look at my brother who was down but tried to not let it show. What a sight for sore eyes. I watched them face us, with tears in their eyes. As soon as I could, I ran to Kunimi, Kindaichi, and Tooru to hug them. “We all smell like sweat but you did your best, okay?,” I say joining their crying as well. “We’ll get back at them. We will.”</p><p>I laughed it off with them as we joked about each other. It was our way to feel better somehow. I left my friends to run after my brother. “Tooru, I always will believe in you. Don’t forget that, this isn’t the end,” I tell him as I watch him wipe his tears. “You’re the better Oikawa. Take the gold home okay?,” he said. I wasn’t, and I may as well never be.</p><p>“If they’ll keep calling me the ‘Better Oikawa’ then they should call you the ‘Best Oikawa’ then.”</p><p>He smiled. It was subtle, merely nothing but I was able to lift his spirits. “Come here,” he says hugging me as we walk. At least, there was always a person in this world who would never call me the monster I was even if he’s seen me in the darkest of days. He never listened, he didn’t get sidetracked by me but at least I knew we’d never turn our backs on each other. </p><p>“Ichika,” a calm voice says and I look to see Tsukishima who quickly turns away. I try to run after him but I feel my phone vibrate instead. I peer into my pocket to look at the message.</p><p>Tsukishima (Sent at 4:32 PM, October 5)<br/>
[You didn’t cheer for me. Meet me at the library café if you’re free.]</p><p>Ichika (Sent at 4:33 PM, October 5)<br/>
[Okay.]</p>
<hr/><p>That night, I had gone out to the café. I sat in the same seat with the same drink as I waited for him. “You’re early,” Tsukishima says placing his bag on the seat beside his. “Sorry. Sorry I didn’t cheer for you. My brother needed it more. Congratulations by the way,” I say passing him his soda. “Thanks. I don’t like soda anymore but it’s the thought that counts. You told me how bad it tasted in so much detail,” he says referencing a conversation we had about soda back then.</p><p>We sat in silence. “Ichika,” he calls my name and I look up at him who was smiling. “I have a brother to you know? We aren’t on the greatest terms but you know you can share things with me if you’re comfortable. You always look like you carry the world on your shoulders whenever I catch you off guard,” he says in a serious tone. “I can share that with you, you know?”</p><p>“Then I’ll tell you a little about me if you tell me what happened between you two. And if you try to make up with him,” I tell him after sipping coffee. “I saw him cheering for the team instead of being a player like I believed he was. Not a big deal though. I’m trying to talk to him. It’s hard to do so, he was the first person who broke my heart” he says as he takes the coffee he ordered. “I thought you didn’t like coffee?,” I say as I mock his lecture the first time we went here. “Well, I do now.”</p><p>I laugh at him as his reaction from sipping the caffeine is drawn on his face. “Idiot,” I say laughing at him. “Tooru’s broken right now. He’s out with Iwaizumi and his teammates right now. I can’t blame them though. He never really can believe in himself until someone else does,” I say as I remember the day Tooru found me fighting off my own demons and telling him it was fine. We were truly siblings.</p><p>“They both will probably be at tomorrow’s match. I’ll be there too, the second match of the day after yours,” I tell him and he immediately smiles. He touches my hand that was resting on the table which causes me to look at him directly at his golden eyes behind his lenses. “Then you better make it up to me tomorrow,” he says and as he does, it leaves a confused expression on my face.</p><p>“Cheer me on, Ichika.”</p><p>I smile at him. I nod my head yes. “That’s what you’ve been all flustered about? Tch. How shallow,” I tell him. He laughs at me. “Do you want me to cheer for you too?,” he rolls his eyes as he signals me to get on his bike. “Don’t answer it. I won’t,” he says as I put my hands around his waist. “I don’t need your cheers,” I taunt him as he laughs at me.</p><p>It was in the moments like this that treasure was hidden. Here lay the hidden moments that only the night sky and we two knew about. They were the moments that made my heart flutter. I was overwhelmed by having someone last this long without seeing the real me. I was keeping my walls up higher as I knew he’d leave the moment I would crack. </p><p>It was in the moments like this that the firefly glowed brighter and where the flower planned to bloom.</p>
<hr/><p>“Hey,” Tsukishima calls out to me as I sat in the lobby with my earphones on. “Cheer for me,” he mouths as he walks away and smirks. I pull out my phone to text him, “Of course” I wrote as I watched him and his team walk off into the distance. </p><p>Before the match started, I ran to their blonde manager. “Um…hi,” I tell her and she freezes up. “I’m Oikawa Ichika, I can’t really cheer for someone but I promised him I would. Please do it for me,” I say bowing as I hand her a small banner. She nods at me and I thank her, walking back to our spot. “Kei wants to speak?,” I hear a masked man say as I walk. I then hear what sounded like what someone pulling him in the distance. “I’m Tsukishima Kei’s brother!”</p><p>So he was the person who first broke Tsukishima’s heart.</p><p>The game was intense, as it should have been. I watched the small banner I made for him flow in the air as the game went on. I was smiling. I rarely did do this while watching games but the way Tsukishima screamed made me happy. He finally had found his inner peace with this game. There were days he’d talk to me about quitting, but I always told him to never give it up. And here we were.</p><p>Yet, for a moment, my heart dropped. Tsukishima had stopped playing in the middle of a set due to an injury. “I need to use the restroom,” I tell our captain and run after them as they head to the infirmary. “Oikawa, what are you doing here?,” asks Karasuno’s blonde manager as she notices me standing outside with her.</p><p>She introduces herself as well and I smile at her. “I may be an Oikawa but I’m not as scary as my older brother. Don’t be nervous,” I tell her to calm her down. “Don’t tell Tsukishima I went here, okay?,” I tell her and she nods as I try to hide as his brother comes out of the room. Yachi and Akiteru go ahead while Tsukishima stayed in the infirmary for a while. I hear him walk out and I press myself against a wall. “You didn’t cheer for me did you?,” Tsukishima says as he puts his face near mine.</p><p>He had one hand against the wall, caging me. His face was extremely close to mince that if I wore glasses instead of contact lenses, the frames would touch. “I did,” I tell him and he looks confused. “Didn’t you see the banner? I barely slept because of that. I wanted to keep my promise,” I tell him and he looked flustered. “I’ve found you in the crowd and I’ll look for you. Smile at me, okay?”</p><p>“Of course. I promise I will. I’ll smile at you when my eyes meet yours.”</p><p>“Don’t change seats. So I’m sure that I know where you’ll be. I’ll promise to smile back.” </p><p>With that, I rush back to my team and watch the game continue. I sat in the same seat as I watched him play despite his injury. As the fifth set progressed, I looked at his face showing how much in pain he was after the ball had hit his injured hand. He looks at me, and I smile at him. He probably wouldn’t know, but I mouthed something to him at that very moment. “Don’t let the pain get to you, fight till the end.”</p><p>He smiles back and assures me he’s fine. I know he isn’t but if he can keep fighting, then I would smile back at him. I watched them celebrate their victory. He was happy. He was fine. I watched him smile at his brother and as his team faced our seats, he looked at me. He looked directly into my brown eyes and smiled discreetly. </p><p>There and then—the firefly and the flower were getting a glimpse of the things they had been hiding from each other.</p>
<hr/><p>After his match, it was now time for mine. I didn’t expect him to be at mine though. He was tired and I knew watching me play would be his ideal form of rest. It was fine. I didn’t need him to be there. My life didn’t depend on whether he was there or not. I walked onto the court as soon as my name was called. “Number 10, Oikawa Ichika,” the announcer called as I stepped onto the court.</p><p>Of course, I already knew what they would say. I was nothing else but Oikawa Tooru’s little sister who seemed to copy him. They would call me the better one knowing I could control the play more than Tooru could. They would call me that because I was better at pretending I actually didn’t think choosing this path we were both on was hell.</p><p>The ball was tossed into the air and I did my best to give all my teammates the opportunity to get their spikes across the net. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me every time I set the ball towards our spikers. Every set, every receive, and every serve was uncomfortable because I knew they had their eyes on Tooru’s little sister. </p><p>But I was used to it. I always have been.</p><p>So I kept doing my best. I was used to having so much pressure on me that perhaps without it, I would fall apart. I didn’t just carry my own name and the team’s name with every touch I made with the ball. I carried Tooru’s name too, so I wasn’t doing my best for me. It was always for them. It never was for myself.</p><p>As the fourth set reached its critical points with Seijoh at its match point and Niiyama Girls High were at a set point. They had won the first set, and we took the second and third sets home. The referee’s whistle blew as I was about to walk to the end line to serve. We all look to the side as another player raises their card. The card however, had my number on it and I looked in horror as I was forced to sit on the bench for the set. “You really had to throw in a pinch server now?,” I ask our coach.</p><p>She smiles at me. “Considering I was going for where their libero would have the least access, I could just do a setter’s dump twice and win this set. Even better, I could put all my power into getting a service ace twice in a row. It would be that easy to win this whole thing. Isn’t that what you always wanted?,” I told them angered about what was going to happen. “You really are stubborn like your brother. You need a break. You need to breathe,” she says. “Whether you like it or not, you’re staying here until you aren’t filled with bloodlust.”</p><p>She saw right through me. I was good at hiding the fact I was putting my all into this match to achieve my brother’s dream for him. I was filled with bloodlust. I wanted to do everything to win this game, even if it meant crossing the boundaries I had set for myself.</p><p>The firefly wouldn’t be surprised if the moment the flower bloomed, there would be the blood of the things it had needed to kill to grow. Rather, the firefly would want to wash it all away even if it was painted red all over.</p>
<hr/><p>I sat on the bench to see them lose the fourth set. I was frustrated. The pinch server wasn’t familiar with the sets the wing spikers and I had done. But I couldn’t do anything but watch. I was close to crying but everyone still would look back at my restless state on the benches. “She must be getting antsy. Look at her trying so hard to beat her own brother,” a bystander seated at the bleachers behind us said.</p><p>That’s what I was in their eyes. The person trying too hard to bury their brother’s image and to replace it with their own. But I wasn’t trying hard for myself. It was always the fact I wanted my family to be proud of me. It was always for the team to just change their mind about me only getting on because Tooru was my brother. It was always to let Tooru see that he could still have even the smallest bit of hope in me.</p><p>I wasn’t crossing my own limits for myself. I never lived for myself. It was always for somebody else.</p><p>But they always saw me as the selfish sister that tried to fill her empty pieces by overstepping her brother. I was the monster who they saw as someone who would kill to be on top by their selves. I was shaking. I felt myself breaking as I heard those words repeat in my mind. </p><p>“Ichika,” a familiar voice says behind me and I look to see Tsukishima. “Benched? I thought you didn’t need me to cheer for you. I made up with my brother so I better see you smiling. You better win, you know? If you don’t then I have one more thing to tease you about,” he says as I feel a tear threatening to fall from my eye. “You know I’ve realized something after watching you play for nearly four sets straight.”</p><p>He turns to his left watching the pinch server I was subbed with toss at low heights. “You are exactly what I could define as the opposite of the King. Yet you two are so similar. If he thinks he can win by himself by pushing his team to its limits, you think you can win by yourself by climbing onto your teammate’s efforts then pull the finishing and most destructive blows by yourself. And he does that for himself, while you? You don’t. Play for yourself for once.”</p><p>The firefly had seen the blood on the flower and looked at its beauty—at the fact the beauty of the garden didn’t entirely rely on it but at the same time it did.</p>
<hr/><p>I looked back at the game. The fifth set only was up to 15 points, and the scores were at 6-5 with Niiyama in the lead. “Coach, put me back in the game,” I tell her and she calls for me to walk back in the game. I served with the thought of doing something for myself for once and the ball had made it past the net, with it falling to the front as their receivers dive for it.</p><p>I smiled for once. My teammates were surprised to see me smile in the middle of the game. “I hate sounding like my brother, but I believe in you guys. Let’s win this together,” I tell them setting everyone on fire as we continue to play. </p><p>The scores were tied at 21 and we were all losing our stamina. I was at the front of the rotation and I was afraid to lose. I was doing it for myself but I couldn’t change the fact that even if I erased that mentality, they were pressed into my mind. And with that I watched as the back of the rotation struggled to catch the falling ball. Our score was now 21, and theirs was 22.</p><p>It wasn’t the time to give up so I kept fighting. I would keep fighting even if it would cost my life. I set every ball to the spikers no matter how far they were. I received every ball I could even if it meant the possibility of not being able to get back up after diving after it. I even spiked a few balls just to get to this moment. I couldn’t give up now. But they were still above us with the scores at 27-26.</p><p>Their ace served the ball and I ran after it as it was about to hit the floor. And as I tried to let it back into the air with an upper hand receive, I felt my chest hurt. The receive was good enough that it could pass as a set. I was having such a tight feeling in my chest, but I was in the middle of a game. That didn’t matter as I still tried to get it up in the air. I couldn’t. Before I could jump into the air, I fell to the floor as everything went black.</p><p>We didn’t win. I woke up in the infirmary an hour later in cold sweat. “You fainted in the middle of a game. The ball fell along with you. Haven’t I told you not to work too hard,” Tooru says as I get up looking for the ball. “I’m sorry,” was all I could say as the realization of our loss dawned upon me. “Why are you telling me sorry? Your whole team feels bad they overworked you. They felt embarrassed to put the entire game’s shoulder on a first year,” he laughs. “I’m sorry for making them feel bad.”</p><p>“Don’t worry. They promised to help their genius setter next year. Ichika you do realize you have two more years in front of you,” he says and I watched his teasing façade fade away. “I hope you know I’m proud of you. You barely sat down during time outs and that ten minutes on the bench was your only rest and you were antsy even then. I’m proud to have you as a sister. You’re not a monster trying to overcome me, okay? You did well.”</p><p>He pats my head as I tear up more. “I’ll go ahead. They’re waiting for you outside. We’re having dinner to celebrate later okay?,” he says walking outside the clinic door. I follow to see my teammates still with tearstained faces. I fall to the ground before them telling them all my apologies. “Win next time. Thank you, Ichika. You’re a monster but you’re our monster,” our captain joke around and I try to laugh along. It was a sensitive matter, but nothing good will happen if I resist the name. We were to wait for the awarding so we walked around the venue to ease our pain.</p><p>I sat in an empty hallway that wasn’t passed by through often. I knew that as I’d come here to comfort my brother after he’d lose games. But I was here alone now. I sat and I felt the tears falling down my face. My chest hurt. For the first time in my life, I truly felt the feeling of my heart breaking. “Ichika.”</p><p>I look up with blurry vision to see a tall figure towering above me. He sits beside me as I bury my face into my knees. “It’s alright,” he says patting my back. “You won the game even if that wasn’t what the scores said. Everyone’s telling me I’m my team’s MVP today, and I hope you are your team’s MVP too. I said I wouldn’t cheer for you but you pulled me in like a bee drawn to nectar. Watching you play made me want to cheer for you,” Tsukishima says as I continued to sob.</p><p>He touches the side of my head and bends it so I can lean on his shoulder. “Don’t get my jacket dirty,” he teases as I giggle lightly. “I don’t care if you won’t go to nationals with me. You’ve won every game you’ll ever play with your talent. Don’t let that go to waste and play for yourself will you? Live for yourself you pipsqueak,” he says with a straight face.</p><p>“I never have lived for myself. All my life, I’ve been living just to meet everyone’s expectations. My parents, my grandparents, uncles and aunts, teachers and even my own siblings expect so much from me. And of course, like the dumb person I am—I live up to them because it’s the only thing I can do. I didn’t know what it felt like to do something that would make myself happy. Today was the first time. If you hadn’t knocked me out of my frustration, I wouldn’t know that feeling.”</p><p>He looks at me and runs his fingers through my hair as I wipe my tears. “They called you a monster, didn’t they? Well I see why now,” he says and my heart was filled with fear. Today was the day he’d leave me. “Don’t worry. I’m a monster too. Let’s be monsters together then?,” he says chuckling and I hit his arm. “Maybe if you wait long enough I’ll tell you why. But I’m glad you made up with your brother. I know I promised to tell you but I can’t right now,” I tell him. “I understand. I’ll wait. I’ll still be here for you no matter how much of a jerk I act like.”</p><p>Perhaps that was his charm. All the times we hung out, it wouldn’t be complete without him insulting me. It made me feel better somehow, having someone be this comfortable with me. I still don’t know why he’s here but having him beside me feels like the world is no longer against me. It felt like comfort.</p><p>I felt my heart beating once more as I took my head off of his shoulders. “I’m not like this. It’s only because I want to live up to what they make me out to be. The ‘better one’. I don’t want to make my brother feel bad but having this overly competitive feeling runs in the blood. I just want them to know that I can be everything they want me to be even if that will end me,” I confess. </p><p>These words I was telling him were things I could never tell Kindaichi or Kunimi. I couldn’t tell Tooru these words at all. They always lay here hidden beneath me as I pretended they never were here at all. I always treated these feelings as if they never existed because I knew no one would listen. And if someone would, they would probably add fire to the flame and use them against me to burn me alive once more like they always have been doing. But it felt different this time around as I told Tsukishima Kei these words.</p><p>It was silent after I let go of those words. I was about to apologize from opening up to him a bit too much. My problems were too heavy and only I could carry them and have strength to still ignore them. “I want you to know that whenever you see me from now on, you don’t have to live up to those expectations. Ichika, I want you to start living for yourself. Take those burdens of your shoulders and smile.”</p><p>“It’ll be hard to do so. But please try. No one owns you and you don’t have to fight for everything in your life. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone because you’ve proven yourself time and time again. I want you to know that with me, you are free to grow,” Tsukishima says looking at me in the eyes. For once, he said those words such genuinely. I look down to see his broken hand on top of mine, I wasn’t planning on moving it though. </p><p>“I want you to grow into the person you want to be as long as you’re with me. I want you to be happy living for no one else but yourself.”</p><p>That’s when the firefly saw that the flower didn’t turn against the world on their own accord—it’s because they had craved for the world to see them for what they truly were for once.</p>
<hr/><p>“Ichika,” Kindaichi called as he waved the invitation to the training camp at Shiratorizawa Academy. “I got one too. I just don’t want to look like Yutaro being an idiot,” Kunimi says calmly showing his as well. Kindaichi teased me for a few minutes until I laughed at him. “How bold of you to assume I didn’t get one too?”</p><p>I waved the invitation for the National Youth Training Camp in their faces and Kindaichi’s face dropped. “Anyways, I’ll take my leave. I have somewhere else to be,” I tell them putting on the Aoba Johsai jacket. “Out with that guy you bumped in?,” Kunimi says and I froze in my tracks. “I haven’t told you about him how did you know?,” I ask nervously and they laugh at me. “We won’t tell your brother.”</p><p>Tsukishima met me at a convenience store at sunset. “Heard you got into that National Youth Training Camp thing,” he says calmly as he takes my bag. “Yeah. Don’t carry my bag it makes it look like we’re dating,” I scold him and he laughs. “Before I pull a rebuttal, I got into the Shiratorizawa Training Camp. And if you weren’t wearing your uniform it would look like child labor to make you carry that bag,” he says teasing my height. “I’m 172 centimeters tall give me a break.”</p><p>We walked to a nearby library. We were both studying English until I came across a word. “Evanescent,” he pronounces out for me as I try to copy him. “It means vanishing quickly or lasting a very short time. For example, if I weren’t intrigued by you the time we’d spend together would be nothing but an evanescent moment,” he explains more and makes me create my own sentence.</p><p>“And like the fast ticking of the clock, the speed of light and the moments passing by I try to keep the memory of each evanescent second I spend with you—for I never know if out of the blue, I’d lose you and we would remain two lines that had intersected at one point and have gone are separate paths completely thereon after.”</p><p>He stares in me at awe then chuckles. “I said a sentence not half a paragraph,” he jokes and I glare at him. He takes his headphones off of his neck and places them on my ears. I could see his lips moving but I couldn’t hear the word he was saying through the music pouring into my ears from his headphones. He took them off after speaking and laughed. “I said stop acting dumb, you short stick,” he laughs.</p><p>Even in the winter, when most succumbed to the cold—the firefly and the flower stayed there warm.</p>
<hr/><p>Both our training camps passed by like the cold breeze of winter. We didn’t talk at all. It felt cold to suddenly stop my habit of texting him whenever I was done with training, but I had to stop it. It was the final night of the training camp and I was ready to lay flat on my bed that is until someone tapped my shoulder in the hallway. “Ichika.”</p><p>I look behind me to see Kageyama. “Tobio,” I say and he looks at me sternly. “Nothing. I just want to ask you if you like Tsukishima,” he says catching me off guard. “I don’t. We just hang out. I don’t know why as well. Anyways I should be going,” I tell him turning around to the opposite direction. As I reach the room, I jump into my bed and stare at the ceiling.</p><p>Did I like him?</p><p>For a fact, I knew I didn’t. As long as I didn’t get attached to him, I would be fine. He’d leave if he saw a worse side of me. But yet again, he saw me break down. However, that could be out of pity and so he would be eaten up by conscience knowing he saw me driving myself half insane that day. I was overwhelmed by the evanescent feeling of someone not seeing me for the monster I was.</p><p>It was a comforting thought, but it wasn’t one to be dwelled upon. He was just someone who lasted longer at not seeing the demons inside of me and someone blind enough to think that I was just another regular person who hated themselves. Tsukishima Kei can be comfort, but he is ephemeral.</p><p>Looking up at the ceiling, I whisper to myself. “I don’t like him. There’s a sheer difference between attraction and the thought of having someone. I’m just deprived of affection. I like the thought and the idea of him here but him—I don’t like him at all.”</p><p>There were things the flower didn’t know how to say—why did it have thorns down its neck or why its pistil was painted with blood—for the moment she’d tell him, he would leave. And she needed company.</p>
<hr/><p>Nationals rolled around and I couldn’t watch his games in person. If only I could, then I’d go to Tokyo and cheer for him. Instead, I was stuck texting him with no assurance if he’d even respond. He was too busy and I understood that. But by some miracle, my brother had gotten us a ticket to watch their match with Kamomedai High. We took the night trip to Tokyo to be there just in time for the match.</p><p>“I’ll just be buying Iwa-chan some shirts. Don’t get lost I don’t know what to tell mom and dad if I lose you here. I’ll be by the very back of the seats where Karasuno’s cheerleaders will be,” Tooru says before he runs off into the variety of stores. I walk around until I see a familiar face. “Yachi?,” I ask the blonde girl sitting by the side of a pole. “Oikawa-san?”</p><p>I explain to her why I’m there and I ask her where they’ll be playing at. “You’ll be cheering for them?,” she asks me surprised. “I’m not competing or representing an opposing school right now, am I?,” I giggle and the two of us walk to the bleachers chatting about things. I stood near the very front with her and two older men. Karasuno then walked onto the court with their black jersey with orange details. I immediately spot him in the crowd.</p><p>As much as I wanted to, I didn’t call out his name. I knew he hated such antics and I respected that. After all, if he were to walk out of my life soon I’d avoid picking up habits like this. The game began and I had my eyes fixated on him the whole time that I didn’t even remember the discomfort that came with having to watch Kageyama play alongside him. As he was on the side, he looked up to us and I immediately wanted to hide but couldn’t. I thought he didn’t see me, so I felt relief for a moment.</p><p>Instead, he looked directly in my eyes making my cheeks turn a light pink. He rolls his eyes and gives me a shy smile before he walks back onto the court. Yachi looked at my reactions and began teasing me. “It’s not like I like him. Tooru just coincidentally got tickets to this game,” I defended myself and she gave it up as we went back to watching the match.</p><p>He tried to block every ball coming his way, but it wasn’t enough. We all watched as Hinata collapsed to the floor because of his fever—giving me flashbacks that day when I myself fell before hitting the ball. There was neither a disappointed or angry expression on his face. It looked neutral but he turned to us and bowed with a smile. He looked at me and smiled as I gave him a thumbs up.</p><p>I ran to them after the match, avoiding my brother. He was soaked in sweat but if I acted without thinking it through, even that wouldn’t stop me from hugging him. Instead, I looked at him and smiled. “Tsukishima! You did your best,” I tell him and he laughs. “Of course I did. You were there watching me.”</p><p>I roll my eyes at him and walk back to my brother. “You were with Karasuno’s blocker I see,” he says teasing me. “Yeah. We’re friends I guess,” I tell him and he laughs at me. I feel my phone vibrate and I open it to see a text from Tsukishima. </p><p>Tsukishima (Sent at 2:21 PM, January 8)<br/>
[Look behind you or I’m throwing this away.]</p><p>I look back to see him, covered in less sweat but holding a bag. I look at Tooru and he nods at me, giving me permission to run to him. “I accidentally got it too small and it would look like it’d fit a pipsqueak like you,” he says handing me a bag that had a shirt inside. It was too big for me but I could make it work. The shirt was dark purple and had a middle blocker kind of design printed on it in white text with black outlines. “Thanks,” I say shyly as I wave good bye knowing Tooru was calling me. As I reach Tooru, I receive another text.</p><p>Tsukishima (Sent at 2:24 PM, January 8)<br/>
[Thank you for watching me today.]</p><p>There were certain things no one else could understand, like how this firefly was attracted to the flower. It made perfect sense to him however.</p>
<hr/><p>I tossed the ball to every player as we began practice. Kunimi and Kindaichi were there since we planned on going home together. After tossing to them, we practiced our serves and I was desperately trying to perfect my jump float serve. “Ichika it’s going to be rainy if you plan to stay here till nine again,” Kunimi complains as he munches on an onigiri. It was May and the rain began to pour slowly.</p><p>And just like that, I had met Tsukishima a year ago. It was on the fourth day of May and it had been steady since then as we spent a lot of time together. It wasn’t like we liked each other but perhaps it was our pining for things we could only receive from each other. I yearned for the idea of comfort I saw in him and he yearned the words Kageyama once told me. It wasn’t any special.</p><p>I left my personal practice earlier than I wanted to due to their demands as we walked through the rain. “Ichika, is there really nothing going on between you and that middle blocker?,” Kindaichi suddenly asks out of the blue. “There isn’t. We’re just… acquaintances or friends or whatever we labelled ourselves as to avoid further questioning,” I tell him and he looks at me sternly. “You like him, do you?,” he questions making me go pink. “She’s blushing,” Kunimi says joining on in the teasing. </p><p>“I don’t. I’m just shocked that you guys actually seem interested in my life and no I really don’t like him. I’m just really overwhelmed at the amount of emotional investment,” I defend myself and they continue to tease me. “If that’s the case,” Kindaichi says and smirks. “See you tomorrow!,” he continues and runs off into the distance leaving me alone. I was far from the nearest train station and the rain had just gotten harder. They left me in front of a convenience store after confirming things.</p><p>The flower was used to insects leaving her just as they got their fill.</p>
<hr/><p>Frustrated, I walked inside the store to allow the rain to die down a little. It wasn’t safe for me to walk home alone in this weather. They knew that, but they still left me here. I sighed as I bought a cup of coffee for myself and sat by the window. I placed my chin on the surface of the counter and closed my eyes—only to open them again at the feeling of music filling my ears.</p><p>“You’re actually drinking hot coffee for once.”</p><p>I look up to see Tsukishima. He had plugged one of his earphones into my ear as he sat beside me. “How did you know,” I ask questioning how he recognized me at once. “How could I not? Small, coffee cup in hand, Aoba Johsai uniform with brown hair tied into a ponytail with two strands pulled to the front and glasses pushed back so they look like shades?,” he says teasing me and I jokingly hit him. “And of course I would recognize you.”</p><p>But what surprised her was the fact the firefly stayed there no matter what.</p><p>“Kindaichi and Kunimi left me,” I ranted slightly as he took the seat beside me. His earphone was still in my ear as the other side was in his. “In this weather?,” he criticizes but I knew he wasn’t done speaking yet. “If I were them I’d leave you ate Seijoh to begin with,” he smirks and I roll his eyes at him. That was what made him Tsukishima Kei. I wouldn’t change anything about it.</p><p>I watched two drops of rain slide down the window sill as I listened to the song. It was in English, but I understood the lyrics. The song playing was Winnetka Bowling League’s song, CVS. I didn’t like these kinds of songs, but it felt just so naturally calming listening to them. I watched the raindrops slide down together till the near bottom of the glass, and they parted. One had been strayed off to the side of the pane and the other kept going forward.</p><p>Watching these raindrops felt so dumb. What was I even doing? Tsukishima was opening his book and reading as I continued to stare at the window pane. “This song is great. I like to think about it as falling in love with a person so suddenly. You don’t realize you are falling, but when you do it hits you like a truck. You just wake up—and realize you love them,” Tsukishima says breaking the silence causing me to look at him.</p><p>He continues to read his book and slyly took my cup of coffee, bringing it to his lips to take a drink. “Why chocolate hearts from CVS? Well, it’s usually one of the only stores open at the ungodly hours of the day. Don’t you think it’s bittersweet to be in love with someone when you keep denying it?,” he says as if he spoke from experience.</p><p>His words hit home. Of course, it is bittersweet.</p><p>Nodding my head in response, I take a sip of my coffee as we watch the rain pour. I straightened my back and fix the shirt that I was too unbothered to change. Upon realization, I realized it was the one he gave me.  “I don’t believe in love,” I confess and he looks at me in awe. “I know it exists, I just refuse to acknowledge it. Love tears you apart to pieces, it makes you stop breathing when it’s too much and it leaves you with all that damage. I don’t need that baggage in my life. Loving someone is just troublesome,” I add staring yet again at the glass pane.</p><p>I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or whatever expression was painted on his face. But I stood by my words. My vulnerability had yet again shown the monster laying inside of me. “Then let’s not believe together,” he says holding out his hand to me. “Your hands are cold, I’ll put them in mine to warm them up,” he says as he takes my hands.</p><p>It truly is bittersweet to fall without even realizing it.</p><p>He looks at me and laughs at my shocked expression. “I didn’t really believe in love too. At least now, I think I do. I still don’t know why you refuse to love at all but I can guess why,” he says letting go of my hands. “You’re probably too dumb and naïve but you probably have fallen. I probably have too. We can’t just say those unless we speak from experience,” he theorizes.</p><p>Tsukishima gets up and I drink my coffee. “Catch up with me shortie,” he jokes walking away. I catch up to him in front of the store and he smiles. “We can’t fit under one umbrella, can we? Yours is too small and I don’t have one,” he says with a smug look. He suddenly takes off his jacket and ties it around my waist. He bends down and without hesitation, he speaks. “Get on my back, then hold the umbrella. I’ll run to a station.”</p><p>I did exactly what he said. I held on tight to him as we ran through the streets of Miyagi as he carried me on his back. He placed me down at the entrance of the train station as I was laughing. “That was embarrassing stop,” he said with a stern expression. “We looked so dumb. But the rain really looks pretty,” I said and began to tell him how I wanted to dance in it. “Maybe another time,” he says waving goodbye as we go in different directions. I suddenly feel someone bump into my back.</p><p>“I met you a year ago, didn’t I? Ichika.”</p><p>Yes you did Tsukishima. Yes, you did. We met during our first year, and we were now in our second year of high school. How could you have managed to stay this long?</p><p>All of a sudden, the firefly was hoping for the stars to dim so the flower could see his glow. At the same time, the flower had also been working to look pretty when it would finally bloom.</p>
<hr/><p>Waiting for Tsukishima was extremely tiring. We agreed to meet at the café we would always go to, but we weren’t staying there. He said he wanted to go somewhere else. His exact words were “We’re giving them too much profit, they won’t even give us discounts after our fifth cup of coffee. Capitalists.” It was surprisingly chilly even for an August day and standing outside a warm place in this breeze made it worse.</p><p>After a while, he finally came. “Freezing?,” he jokes as I get on his bike shivering. “No. I am visibly not,” I roll my eyes at him and he laughs. “Come on, I’m just teasing you. I didn’t tell you to wear a skirt that went above your knees I told you to dress nice,” he says as he takes off his earphones and coat. He once again places both sides of the earphones on my ears and says something before placing his coat on me.</p><p>I slip into his coat and he laughs as he removes the earphones “Do you need a lifeguard? You look like you’re drowning in my coat,” he teases me. I hope on his bike and I cling to him. I didn’t care if he thought I was too clingy, I needed warmth. The warmth that just happened to be around was his warmth. “Hold on tighter, you might fall off.”</p><p>We eventually reach the place. It was a calm lake surrounded by pine trees. “My brother showed this place to me, and I thought you’d like it. I love the view, so I wanted to take you here,” he says leaning his bike against a tree. There lay two logs that acted as benches and a small stack of twigs and sticks. He pulls a lunchbox out of his bike compartment to reveal two bento boxes. “This is the last time I’ll do such a gesture, enjoy it while you can.”</p><p>I chuckled as I watch him light the twigs to create a small bonfire. I pull out my phone and began to take pictures around. I accidentally took a picture of Tsukishima in the frame, and as my hand pressed on the shutter button, taking another picture of him facing the camera. He smirks and walks to me. “Delete,” he says pointing at my phone. “No.”</p><p>He massages his temples trying to exaggerate his frustration. Instead of pushing it further, he takes out his own phone and takes multiple pictures of me once I pushed our quarrel aside. I pretended not to hear the shutter sound as he took his pictures and I’d occasionally look at the camera even. “You’re not a model, you’re blocking the view,” he says and I roll my eyes at him. </p><p>“Didn’t you say you love the view? I am part of the view, Tsukishima.”</p><p>He rolls his eyes at me and heads towards the logs. “Fine,” he says opening the bento box and I follow him. I open mine to see a few snacks and rice balls in it. I thanked him for the food and we stayed there under the pine trees, beyond the lake, and by the bonfire talking about life until the sun kissed the horizon goodbye.</p><p>Under the orange and pink skies, the firefly came to rest on the flower. They didn’t need anything more in those very moments.</p>
<hr/><p>We lay there talking about life for hours. We had extinguished the fire earlier but he was relighting it as I sat by the log. It was around seven in the evening and it was getting cold again. He relit it and walked towards me. He was wearing a light gray button-down and black pants which seemingly matched my white top and black skirt. He suddenly lay his head in my lap, causing me to freak out for a few seconds. “Calm down, it’s just me,” he says teasing me.</p><p>We admire the night sky as we look up. He takes out his phone and I move my face back to give him the view of the stars and the moon. “Why’d you move? I wanted you in the frame,” he says and I immediately head back in. “You really believed that,” he says laughing and showing me the picture. It was me admiring the night sky from his angle. He then took his earphones and gave one earbud to me as we listened to music in silence.</p><p>“Hey,” I called out to him and he looked at me, unconsciously placing his hand on mine. “I’m a monster. I think you know that,” I tell him and he pauses the music. “They first called me a monster when I was going out of my way to be better than I was. I was considered a monster for taking all the awards for myself. I didn’t mean to, of course, I was seven. How could I have known? So I dumbed myself down and they still called me a monster for trying to act humane,” I said slowly opening up to him.</p><p>Over the past year and three months, he told me things I never would’ve figured out. “It never went away. I was used to it. Then it got worse. I played volleyball too and I wanted to be a setter—I didn’t care if my brother was one too, he didn’t own it. Even my own parents would call me a monster for trying to overstep Tooru. Tell me, was it my fault that I wanted to be seen as something other than his little sister that I tried too hard?</p><p>If he left tonight, it would be fine. I had his secrets too, and he now had mine. “My teammates called me a monster too. I’d always stay until the night just to get better. It was heartbreaking to see them leave me because they said they couldn’t bear being around someone who sucked the life out of them. But we were a team. Weren’t we supposed to practice together? Help each other? I actually came around to loving volleyball then it yet again left me empty as I watched more people leave,” I said as I tried to stop the tears from falling.</p><p>There were memories I suddenly remembered. Memories that if I had the choice, I would have erased as if they never happened. “It’s okay, cry,” he says removing his head from my lap and putting his arm around my shoulder. He buried my head into the nook of his neck. “Even Kunimi and Kindaichi think I’m a monster. They see me as a monster incapable of loving and can only stop fighting until I self-destruct. But nonetheless, they overlook that. But it shows at times.”</p><p>“My brother thought the same after he saw me breakdown after being unable to make it to the nationals. I didn’t have to make it back then, and I knew how to accept defeat. It was the way they put all the blame on me for not trusting other spikers. They turned away from me no matter how hard I tried to be let back in. That’s when I stopped trying to fight the thoughts off and accepted myself for what I truly was.”</p><p>“A monster.”</p><p>He looked at me, taking in every word I said. He could leave if he wanted to. We were in one of those big parks anyways, I could find my way out. I was used to being left out of nowhere to fend for myself.</p><p>“Tell me more.”</p><p>I was taken aback by his words and actually had to confirm it. “But this was the greatest blow. If there was anything worse than having the majority of the world turning their backs on me, it was this. Kageyama Tobio. We weren’t close, friends if you could say. He understood the feeling of tossing only to see no one was behind you ready to spike it. He didn’t see me as a monster. If he said I was one, then he would admit he’s like me.”</p><p>The memories of the fight flooded into my mind. Tsukishima told me it was alright if I didn’t share, but I wanted to. “We had a fight. It was a petty one at first. Then he started bringing up things. From the first time I was called a monster to how I remained one and to even this day, whenever I play they’d call me a monster behind my back. I was used to blocking it out. Always have been used to,” I say looking at the sky. “I only realized I truly became one when he called me a monster.”</p><p>I told Tsukishima the exact words. It never left my mind, it stayed there embossed. “No wonder you’re called a monster. You just want to do too much as if you’re going to die after we graduate high school. Stop acting humanely and just let it out. You’re a monster with destructive thoughts who wants to bring everyone down with her. You let people into your life to destroy them, right? You do it so you can get what you want by all means necessary. You’re worse than a monster.”</p><p>Worse than a monster. Those words never left my mind. They never will. He was under stress too, but he wasn’t lying at that time.</p><p>As the flower bloomed, the firefly saw the corpses of its victims—only to realize it was smaller buds of the flower itself.</p>
<hr/><p>I stood up. “You can leave if you want,” I tell him, unable to look at him. I hear a light chuckle from behind me. “What makes you think I will? If you’re a monster, then you aren’t quite scary at all. What are you? A tiny coffee-addicted teddy bear monster?,” he says laughing wiping my tears. “I don’t know why but even if you didn’t let me into your life, I would still try to barge in.”</p><p>That was the first time I really hugged him.</p><p>I break away pointing at the bushes. “Look, fireflies,” I say as I run to it. “You can read your name as firefly too right?,” I ask him as he follows replies. “Your name means ‘solely flower’ right?,” he says asking as well. He brought out his phone taking pictures, and I did the same. “Fireflies with Kei,” I said laughing at him. “A sole flower with Ichika,” he says taking a picture of me as he places the flower in my hair.</p><p>We went home afterward, realizing how late it was. He assured me it would be alright and my secrets were safe with him. Before he dropped me off, he put his two earbuds in with music playing till all other sound was drained out. He told me things I couldn’t hear again and took them off. He waves farewell and bikes into the darkness. I walk into the house and receive a text.</p><p>Tsukishima (Sent at 9:12 PM, August 8)<br/>
[Fireflies don’t dwell on flowers, but I guess I’m different. You may be a monster, but I’ll stay.]</p><p>Under the moonlight, the firefly was only able to glow at its brightest and the flower was only able to try to bloom.</p>
<hr/><p>I walked into my room smiling. I lay down on my bed, happy for once. How many people have told me they’d stay? Kunimi said it. Kindaichi did too. But it felt different when he said those words. My heart was beating fast, and for the first time in a while, the walls blocking my heart disappeared. I took the flower he placed in my hair—an evening primrose—his favorite. </p><p>I looked at it and perhaps maybe I was done denying it. I opened my phone and slid into the calendar app. I didn’t know why but I knew I needed to remember this. That today was the day I finally surrender to my feelings. I knew I wasn’t sure myself but flowers don’t like it when fireflies lay on them, but I was fine with that.</p><p>That is until my chest felt heavy.</p><p>This was the same feeling I had gotten during the match. It was scary. I couldn’t do anything else. My body shot up from the bed and I began to cough hard. I coughed till I felt my throat run dry. I looked at the floor in horror. It couldn’t be, right? I took the soft material in my mouth and looked back to the same thing that I held just a while ago. Then I looked upon the floor.</p><p>There were petals on the floor.</p><p>The Hanahaki Disease is a disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings—romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough—or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear.</p><p>Feeling afraid of the consequences, the flower chose to hide the fact it was withering from her beloved firefly.</p>
<hr/><p>Pain. It was nothing but pain. Aside from the feeling of not being loved back, there was the feeling of choking on flowers every now and then. The suffocation as they bloomed inside of me was enough to drive me closer and closer to insanity, but I hadn’t achieved my dreams yet. I couldn’t lose to this battle.</p><p>And I would plan to hide it all again.</p><p>They of course would opt for surgery, but I was afraid. Not of needles—but of not believing again. It took a year and half for Tsukishima to make me believe in love and watching it wither away from me was something I knew I couldn’t handle. Hiding it was rather effective though. I just had to pretend I didn’t like him.</p><p>Pretending—the harder part of doing this is that the more time I spend with him the higher the chance of these flowers killing me are. I can deny what I feel all I want but how do I hide it when he’s right beside me? I was afraid he’d leave if he saw me coughing up flowers. If a monster couldn’t make him leave, maybe this would. The result of him leaving wouldn’t help my condition at all—if anything it’d worsen it.</p><p>I just had to hold myself down and ignore these feelings. As long as I remembered that I wasn’t in love with him but I was in love with the idea of it rather—I would survive. As long as he didn’t make my heart flutter, I would live. There was no way I’d get these removed—dying would be an easier thing to go through. Yet my own death wouldn’t have to be on my mind until I would finally decide to stop hiding.</p><p>Tsukishima waves his hand in front of me, making me shoot back into the reality outside of my mind. It was already October, two months after the incident and it still hadn’t sunk in. I’d experiment on myself to find a way to hide these flowers from coming out of my lungs when I wasn’t alone—and ignoring these feelings as if they never existed was the solution. It was hard to breathe considering there were flowers in my lungs, but it was bearable.</p><p>Yet again, doesn’t everything become bearable when it means having to go through it just to achieve our dreams?</p><p>I raise my head from my hand and smile at him. “I’m fine, just a little sick,” I tell him as an excuse. “Sick? Too bad I was going to ask you to dance in the rain with me,” he says fixing his earphones and putting them into his bag. “I’m not sick! Here, feel it. I don’t have a fever,” I tell him as I press the back of his hand on my forehead and neck. He then takes my hand and pulls me outside the doors of the café. </p><p>He raises his coat over my head as we ran through the rain. “I can’t get you sick. Didn’t you say you want to be better so you can go to the nationals next year? Didn’t you promise me we’ll be there together,” he asks as he covers only me with his coat. I did make that promise. And I planned to keep it.</p><p>A few people knew about us hanging out. There were Yamaguchi and Yachi, and maybe Kageyama knew it too. Kunimi, Kindaichi, and Oikawa all knew. I didn’t care if they found out, I had something I was protecting with all my life other than this. If the other slipped, I knew I’d be sentenced to a life of pain yet again.</p><p>I was used to pain but this was different. Aside from the pain, I’d have to let him slip away too.</p><p>He placed the hood of his coat on my head as we laid low near an empty parking lot on the outskirts of the city. I twirled around in the rain as he stood there taking pictures. He then walked towards me and put his hand on my waist, then he reached for my other hand. “I refuse to dance under the rain at all, but you said you wanted to,” he says as we waltz in the rain. I never knew he knew how to dance.</p><p>“Let’s get ourselves dry, I don’t want you to catch a cold,” he says covering me with his coat again as we run to the shade. He gives me a hoodie and a pair of shorts. The shorts he gave me, however, were the ones he used for matches. “Keep them. I have a new pair. I’m throwing away the hoodie anyways,” he says as I go inside the restroom to change. “I look like a rag,” I sigh to myself as I put his clothes on.</p><p>Flowers came out of my mouth. Then I kept coughing. Flowers poured out of my mouth as I could do nothing but hoped he wouldn’t notice I smelled of them and blood. I wipe my mouth and wash my face, getting rid of all evidence that I had coughed up evening primroses and that I had feelings for him. “You’re already coughing. If you get sick, don’t hold me accountable,” he says and I roll my eyes at him.</p><p>The rain appeared as if it wasn’t getting any weaker. Tsukishima looked at me and stuck both his earphones inside my ears with music playing. He said something, his lips were moving. The problem was, the music and rain were blocking out whatever he had just said. I was lengthy as he didn’t even mind looking at me as he spoke. He takes them off and smiles. “I know a café around here, let’s stay there for a while.”</p><p>He takes my hand as he covers me with his coat again. “I’m starting to think you have a girlfriend. You know too many places to hang out here in Miyagi,” I tease him as we reach the café doors. “I like someone. I don’t have a girlfriend,” he says rolling his eyes at me. “As a matter of fact I confessed to her a while ago and have been indirectly doing so for the past months,” he says as we settle into our seats.</p><p>Oh, so that was how it was. He orders for us and as soon as he comes back, he gets chatty. “She’s really pretty. She’s smart too and she’s kind. She doesn’t like certain things including herself but all the things she hates—I love those parts. She didn’t even give me a reaction a while ago when I confessed,” he says as he smiles. “She must be very lucky,” I tell him trying to hide my dismay. “She really is.”</p><p>She truly is the luckiest person.</p><p>I ask to excuse myself as I feel the flowers in my throat. I run to the restroom to cough it all out. I see blood on the petals as they come out. I look at myself in the mirror once more and smile to myself. “Be strong. You’ll be fine, Ichika. There shouldn’t be a reason for you to be hurt. You knew it from the start. Be happy for Tsukishima,” I tell myself and I walk out as if nothing had happened in the restroom. I come back to our table to see quite a setup.</p><p>I sit down awkwardly. I question him as he just laughs at me. He takes out his phone and takes pictures of me and our food. “Are you going to pretend as if I don’t know it’s your birthday? Come on, you look like you forgot about it yourself,” he says pushing the slice of cheesecake towards me. “You told me back then you rarely celebrated your birthdays. You said you were born in October and your birthdays would sometimes be on a cursed date so you didn’t even mind anymore. So I wanted to let you have one,” he says as he shyly smiles.</p><p>The flower didn’t even try to hide the fact that at that moment, she was close to revealing the truth. For the firefly had made her feel special in ways she couldn’t say.</p>
<hr/><p>He places a small box on the counter in the middle of our meal. He had bought us iced coffee and a slice each of strawberry shortcake. “What’s this? Isn’t it too much already? I got you a plush and a shirt for your birthday and you’re giving me too much,” I tell him pouting. He didn’t have time to put the earphones on me so he just covered my ears before speaking. “Let me hear what you said first,” I said and he laughs. “It’s a secret between me and myself.”</p><p>I lift the cover of the box to see a necklace with a flower on it. It was a pink daisy. “Won’t the girl you like get mad if she finds out you treat me like this,” I tell him as he puts the necklace on me. “No. It’ll be fine,” he says confidently. “It’s not like I don’t have time for her right now. Of course, I need to give her space first. And if she were to date me, I’d give her more than this. I hate spending my money on others but to see her smile after I give her something will be priceless,” he says smiling like a madman. “I know I’m just kind of your ‘tester’ or something, but I trust you to treat her well.”</p><p>“Of course I will,” he says playing with his fingers. “She isn’t lucky because she has me—she’s lucky because she has herself even if she has lost so many parts. There’s just something about her smile that can make even the stormiest of days be better than those sunny ones,” he says hiding his affection for her. “You’re the lucky one,” I tell him. “Yeah. I am the lucky one to have her be around all the time.”</p><p>I would give so much just to be the girl he was gushing over right now.</p><p>I’m a fool. I know that. And it sinks in even more as I smile at the daisy pendant laying above his hoodie. There was a single thought in my mind as I watched him look out the window his mind intoxicated with thoughts of her. Tsukishima would be my favorite maybe, and if one day, we saw each other away from what kind of life we have now—I would choose him. Because even if you don't ask, I would still foolishly choose him over and over again. I would choose him over and over again even if I knew how much it would destroy me. </p><p>As the sunset colors the horizon, we leave the café. We walk home in silence. I knew if I spoke, the flowers might fall out. He was going to talk about her anyway, and for once I didn’t want to hear his voice. I knew it wasn’t me—if it was maybe I wouldn’t be coughing up flowers every now and then. But spoilers, I was.</p><p>“See you,” I say as he drops me off at the station. “Happy birthday. Don’t worry, I’ll make her the happiest she’ll ever be, trust me,” he says walking away. He deserved happiness and I was in the way of it. It probably would be best for us if I had slowly left. He’d focus on her, and I’d spend less time painfully having to let the flowers out of my lungs. </p><p>I was afraid to admit it, but maybe this would be for the best.</p><p>And just like that, the flower’s thorns slowly began to defend the bud that was beginning to think if it should close once more.</p>
<hr/><p>I once again had put my frustration into a form of self-torment. I had been avoiding going out as often with Tsukishima over the past few months. It was January now, and I refused to talk to him afraid the flowers would bloom too much and nearly suffocate me once more. </p><p>That day in October. The 13th of October. I would cough up too many flowers and for a moment I couldn’t even breathe. It was scary. It felt nearly like death was knocking at my doorstep. I was trying my best to avoid it but I found myself curled up on the floor crying because of the pain of this curse and how he really did love her. Whoever she was, I wished I was her. </p><p>I could do nothing but watch myself crumble as flowers stained with came out. To make matters worse, Tsukishima had sent every image he took from that day and the day I first started coughing up these flowers. Looking back at them felt so enchanting but every time I did, more flowers would come. I was sure I would die that day, but I didn’t.</p><p>With all my might, I spiked the volleyball into the floor causing a loud thud. It echoed throughout the gym and Kunimi looked at me worriedly. “Ichika, it’s literally nine. Time to go home,” he says approaching me with a towel. We were the last people in the gym, and they sat there watching me slowly destroy myself. It was my best method of improving myself but at the same time, it was extremely destructive.</p><p>“You know Tsukishima would scold you if he saw you like this,” Kindaichi says and I glare at him. He was the exact reason I was here. I had to distract myself from him so I turned my frustration and pining into this. “Why the hell would he care?,” I asked picking up another ball serving it with more force on the other side of the net. They both laugh at my annoyance. “He just will.”</p><p>“He won’t.”</p><p>Kindaichi takes the ball away from me and begins cleaning up as I just stand there. “Shall we tell her?,” he asks Kunimi, and the latter nods. “You do realize we went to the Shiratorizawa camp with him, right? He’d constantly check his phone during breaks and murmur to himself. We even caught him making a playlist for someone. We couldn’t see it though,” Kindaichi says.</p><p>“I saw it. The picture was of a girl drinking iced coffee or something and it had the symbol for flower as the name. Sound familiar?,” Kunimi says as I prepare to leave. “I can’t be the only girl he hangs out with. It’s impossible,” I say ignoring whatever they just said. “Suit yourself. Hurry up we’ll get in trouble,” Kindaichi says as we all rush out of the school.</p><p>Walking inside the house, I was met with silence. Tooru was in Argentina, our older sibling was living on their own now and my parents were probably still at work. This setup was fine, there were fewer people I had to be cautious around. I immediately took a shower and as my body was touched by the water—I felt tears rolling down my face.</p><p>They told me it probably was about me. If it was me—then why would I be in this situation? And if it was me back then, how unfortunate. How unfortunate was I that fate gave me the wrong timing. I step out of the shower and get dressed. I didn’t want to admit it but I still wore his jacket sometimes. Whenever it was getting worse, I’d wear it. The flowers wouldn’t bloom nor would I feel like the monster I was when it was on me.</p><p>I lay in bed as I still felt the world crashing down on me. I was such a danger to myself. I reached for the bottom drawer of my cabinet and take out a silver blade. I raise it up in the air admiring it, thinking of the things I’d do to myself. I sat on the windowsill where I could see the moon. Taking the piece of metal, I place it near my wrists as I begin to sink it in to reveal the red, something stops me.</p><p>A knock on the same window I was beside.</p><p>Moving a bit back from shock, I see Tsukishima staring at me worried. His face had looked as if it was drained of life and as if he had seen me rise from a casket at my own funeral. I drop the blade on the floor as I go to open the window. I didn’t care if flowers came pouring out of my mouth, I needed this moment.</p><p>He steps inside my window and hugs me. “Ichika,” he whispers as I stand there frozen. “Tsukishima,” was all I could say as I felt tears roll down my face. He looks at my wrist and he picks up the blade, throwing it away. “You really want to destroy yourself?,” he says as he shines in the moonlight. “Ichika. I know you think you’re a monster but don’t do this to yourself.”</p><p>I could only cry as I saw him. “I came to see you because I don’t know why you keep bailing on me. I guess this is why,” he says as the anger in his voice began to rise. “Do I have to remind you that I’m still here for you? Hell, even if you move to another country I would book the first flight in the morning just to get to you—and I see you about to cut yourself? Ichika,” he says with a tone he never used before. </p><p>“I’m not mad. I’m guilty. Why are you pushing me away? Ever since your birthday, you started to talk to me less and less. I thought you’d be okay, but I go to your house at 12 in the morning and this is what I see?,” he says falling to the floor. “Tsukishima I stopped talking to you because I thought I was in the way of you two. If you really do plan to treat her right then I’m willing to give up my time with you so you can spend time with her,” I say and he looks up. “All this for that? Or is there something else?”</p><p>Nodding my head yes, he takes a seat on my bed. “Don’t worry, my time is still all yours. She ignores me anyways. She only agrees to hang out sometimes and even when she does, she cancels at the last minute and I went to see her today,” he tells me and I laugh at him. “You really do love her,” I tell him and he agrees.</p><p>Under the moonlit night, the two once again met and for a moment the thorns came down to let the firefly in.</p>
<hr/><p>We sat there in silence as he looked around my room. “I felt lost, again. I saw myself pushing myself to the edge in a form of self-destruction. I became the monster I tried so hard not to be. Constantly pushing myself to be the best in everything. I keep doing it even if I’m way past my limits. It’s been so tiring I haven’t thought about myself in months. All I wanted to do was satisfy my own bloodlust,” I tell him while looking at the moon.</p><p>“Haven’t I told you that you don’t need to be better? You’re already the best for me.”</p><p>Eventually, I sunk into his arms crying. “You look so ugly when you cry,” he tells me as I wipe my eyes. I roll my eyes and playfully hit him on the shoulder. “So many people have been asking me, am I tired? Of course, I am. I haven’t taken a break from achieving my goals. I’m so tired, I want to give up on everything now,” I tell him as I stand up and walk towards the open window.</p><p>He was walking around. Judging by the sounds of his footsteps, he was walking towards me. “You want to give up. Okay. Do it. But when you do remember that I’ve beat you and you didn’t achieve your dreams. You’ll never find out who the girl I like is. You’ll never satisfy your own bloodlust and you’ll die a vengeful ghost and then they’ll make legends out of you,” he teases. His taunt makes me giggle and I face him again.</p><p>I was surprised to see he was right behind me as our bodies pressed together. He backs up and looks at me. “If you want to give up—then give me up first,” he says and the realization hits me. If I did leave this night, what would become of him? I knew he’d move on just fine and that he wouldn’t worry nor blame himself. It was a thought-provoking question I may never answer. “You don’t want to give me up, do you?,” he asks and I nod yes.</p><p>He then takes my hand and pushes his glasses up with his middle finger. He sticks his pinky out, prompting me to the same. “I don’t want to lose the one person I vent my feelings out to as well, so make a promise with me,” he says. </p><p>“Promise me we’ll make it to the nationals together. Promise me we’ll see each other graduate high school.”</p><p>Intertwining our pinkies together, we make a promise. “And also promise me you’ll support me when I finally ask her out after we graduate,” he adds and I roll my eyes at him. “You know my answer,” I tell him and he smiles. He embraces me as I stand there dumbfounded yet again. “Please don’t ever hurt yourself again. I meant everything I said. Especially about your ugly crying face,” he says and with that, he climbs out my window.</p><p>It was unusual for the flower to not feel itself withering at the feeling of the firefly’s warmth. All she knew was, she would hold on for as long as it would take for the next spring to dawn upon them.</p>
<hr/><p>According to Tsukishima, the girl he liked finally started to talk to him as they did before the confession. I didn’t want to be in the middle of them but he had insisted to bring me on their first hangout. “You owe me for making me third wheel you two,” I tell him as he dragged me around the mall. I was happy for him knowing she finally responded to his advances. “I brought you because I wanted to treat you for being top of your class even if I caught you almost doing it again.”</p><p>March came quickly and just like that, after that night in January everything was back to normal. I finally figured how to suppress my feelings. I just had to mask them by teasing or ignore them completely. I was dressed in a sweater and a skirt that hung around my knees with my own coat on. He was dressed in a rather more formal button-down and slacks with a black coat on. He looked attractive, but I told him he looked like a college heartthrob wannabe.</p><p>“I thought you two were meeting 10 minutes ago?,” I ask buttoning my coat down as I began to freeze. His phone’s notification ringtone went off and he looked at it worriedly. He was worried enough to even let me hold the small arrangement of flowers he got for her. “She can’t go,” he said with horror on his face. “Aw, Kei got stood up,” I teased him while thinking how much a jerk this girl he waited so long for was. “We’re here now. It’d be a waste if you dressed up nice to only watch me get stood up. You even tied your hair,” he teases as he plays with the ribbon tied to my ponytail.</p><p>I pout as he drags me by the coat into a restaurant. “Since she won’t be here for me to splurge on—choose anything from the menu. But I swear if I go broke I’m making you pay instead,” he says as we take our seats. “Then I’ll have this,” I point at the cheapest sushi platter and the iced coffee. He orders for us as I sit there. As soon as he comes back, I run to the restroom. I felt the feeling of suffocation creeping up on me.</p><p>There, I let out all the petals. They progressively got bloodier as time passed by. Yet as long as I ignored these feelings, there wouldn’t be so much of them to pour out of my lungs. The effects would worsen over time—from petals, they would eventually turn into whole flowers if the feelings still were not reciprocated at all. They were still petals but one day these would turn into bunches of evening primroses.</p><p>Making my way back to our table, I see our order there and a Tsukishima waiting. “You smell like evening primroses,” he comments as I give him a weird look. “Do you really love it that much that you even know how it smells?,” I joke hiding my nervousness. “Yeah. I’m going to pretend you don’t stop for a full five minutes when you see pink daisies laying around,” he shoots back and I roll my eyes at him. “They mean sweet memories. I specifically asked them to be in this arrangement so I could tell her I want to make memories with her,” he says admiring the flowers.</p><p>He then looks away and hands them to me. “Take them. They’re yours now,” he says shaking it just so I would take it. I awkwardly receive it as I feel the eyes of the people near us focused on us. “Thanks, I guess,” I tell him and begin to eat my platter. We eat in awkward silence, both of us hesitate to say anything. We both finish amidst the awkward silence and he just uses his phone, probably talking to her.</p><p>Out of nowhere, he places his earphones on me and smiles as he plays CVS once more. His lips were moving and whatever he had said seemed to be longer. Not as long as what he said during that rainy October day in the parking but it wasn’t as short as what he said in the library. I tried to read his lips, but I was unable to as he suddenly took the earphones. “I should’ve known she’d leave me hanging, it was a good call to bring you,” he says.</p><p>I didn’t want to but if all I was is his backup plan, I’d just be thankful to be there at that moment.</p><p>I look down and play with the pink daisy pendant on my chest. “She probably found out you’d bring me. If she did, tell her I’m sorry for ruining your plans,” I tell him looking down. “She knew you’d be here and she wanted to go even more. Stop saying sorry. Say sorry to me because when you weren’t here yet I really looked like I got stood up,” he glares as I laugh remembering how he sat at the entrance of the mall anxiously. He held the stems of the flowers in the arrangement a little too harshly I actually thought they’d break.</p><p>His smile after seeing me though made me wish I was truly the one he was waiting for. I never got jealous of others but for once in my life, I actually wanted to be her so badly. The happiness on his face was enough for me to feel butterflies in my stomach and flowers up to my throat—but I had to ignore what I felt for our own sake. </p><p>“She must be really nice,” I say trying to keep our conversation going. I knew it would mean getting sucked into an endless trance of him gushing about her but as long as he was there, I thought maybe it would be fine. “She is. She puts other people’s dreams before her own. She works too hard, and that’s because she wants to have a future where she won’t go through whatever she had gone through in the past. She’s beautiful too. Ethereal if you could say. The way she looks when she’s focused on reading her book or when she’s thinking of how to solve her schoolwork is really cute, but I can’t tell her that directly.”</p><p>He is absolutely smitten about her.</p><p>I ask him to tell me more and he does so with delight. “When she braids her hair when we do sports, I like the way it flows in the wind. But I like it better when she has a high ponytail with two strands on her face—just like yours right now—since it lets me see her eyes and face more. She can keep up with my attitude too and that feels miraculous. I never thought she’d be able to shoot back at my words, but I guess she can and she does so very well,” he says with his head in his hand. He looked like a kid daydreaming of buying all the things in a candy store.</p><p>She watched the firefly gravitate towards the ash tree—his natural home—with absolute happiness as she withered away underneath his nose. </p>
<hr/><p>The next few months passed by as if they were only hours. We didn’t talk as much, I told him that he should focus on her and studying. He turned this into an excuse for me to third wheel them on their study dates which she never showed up to even once. I felt sorry for him. He was a great guy and she was wasting him just like this. He would even grow frustrated sometimes as she’d bail on him when we got there.</p><p>Tsukishima had his hopes too high up when it came to her. I couldn’t lecture him on that because I too had my hopes up high when it came to him. “Aren’t you glad I always come with you,” I tease him after he got stood up once more. I laugh at him as I take of my end of his earphones, standing up to return the books on our table. I placed them back on the shelves as I felt the pain in my lungs. I head to the restroom to cough them up and to my surprise—none came out. </p><p>For a moment, I thought I was finally fine.</p><p>Or so I thought as I watched small buds of evening primroses come out of my mouth. It was getting worse. It had been a year now since I started living through this hell—and it has only gotten worse since then. I even question myself how I am still alive. Probably because I want to stay alive because of that promise we made in January. I clear all of my thoughts as I walk out to go back to our table.</p><p>He sat there with his head on the table, looking like he was asleep. I sit beside him and take the earphone out of his ear. Laying my head on the table I face him and feel another pain in my chest. Thinking back, he probably would have Hanahaki too with the way she acted. He then opened his eyes and chuckled at me. “Don’t you think you should give up on her?,” I ask and he sits up. “You’ll get your answer if we play a game.”</p><p>I bring my head up to rest my chin on my hand instead. “What game exactly?,” I tell him and I could just feel the devious smirk he had plastered on his face. “21 questions. But we split it in half and one of us gets 11 and the other gets then” he says facing me now. I agree with our game and we decide to settle who gets the 11 questions with a game of rock, paper, and scissors.</p><p>Scowling at the result at the game he rolls his eyes. “You better not use that extra question about some dumb stuff,” he says scolding me and I laugh. “First, I don’t get why but how are you still friends with me?,” he asks looking at me directly in the eyes. “Is there supposed to be a reason for me to hang around you? I’m here because I want to. I’m here because I truly find you interesting and maybe—just maybe—you’re someone who makes me very happy.”</p><p>“Okay. Answer my question. Why won’t you give up on her when she’s treating you like this?,” I ask him with a stern expression and he faces the other side. He would do this to hide his emotions at moments he couldn’t control them. “I just won’t. You see, I hate temporary people. I’ll only tolerate you if I know you won’t break my heart. There are reasons you—a person who can’t bring themselves to believe in love—can’t understand. She is an exception.”</p><p>How lucky does she have to be to have Tsukishima Kei of all people fall hopelessly in love with her to the extent he’s willing to get his heart broken?</p><p>I look at him surprised. There was yet another faint feeling of pain in my chest, but I ignored it. “Why do you always smell like evening primroses?,” he asks leaning in to catch a whiff of my scent. “I don’t even know what that smells like and I’ve been using one brand of perfume my whole life,” I tell him as I felt the pain in my chest begin to slowly grow. “Why is she an exception?”</p><p>Looking away once more, he speaks in a calmer voice. “I don’t know why too. I’m honest right now but there’s just something about her that makes me gravitate towards her. You know the emotional damage I’ve gone through and you know I’d leave if I felt it was going to be devastated once she leaves. So you could say she is an exception—because she is assurance.”</p><p>I smile at him. He finally was showing emotions. I was happy for him. Knowing my fate, I would happily hand him over to her that is if she started treating him like she deserved him. “Don’t you think pushing yourself to the edge with studying is your new form of self-destruction? Ichika you finished a 12-paragraph essay in 30 minutes,” he says concerned. “Maybe it is. We’re graduating this year. Aren’t you planning on getting into a great college?,” I respond with guilt in my heart—I was giving my all because I was slowly living my last few months.</p><p>“Tsukishima be honest—why do you really love her? Tell me everything I don’t care if we stay here until the next days,” I tell him forcing myself to swallow the pill that I never will be her even if I tried. “Well, there’s a lot of things that made me fall in love with her. Her voice, her laugh, the way she smiles when I tell her she got the answers right. Maybe it’s the way she looks so concentrated when I look at her without her noticing or the way I catch her singing the songs we listen to unconsciously. I don’t know what it is but I think I love every bit of her—from her flaws to her perfections. All of that. Believe it or not, behind this snarky tongue of mine I’ve tried to tell her words that I’d never say to anyone else. I’ve been just afraid to.”</p><p>He was smiling. He was happy. That was enough for me to convince myself he wouldn’t be devastated after I died. He had her. He always will have her, even if she won’t have him. As long as she’s there he can be happy without me. After all, I am nothing but the person he catches him when he falls and no one else wants to catch him.</p><p>I tease him to hide my own feelings yet again. “My turn. What’s the most painful thing you’ve gone through,” he asks. If I were honest, it would be this. Watching him be the happiest while I slowly die as a consequence of it. “Being called a monster. I’m used to it but the pain doesn’t leave just like that. It lurks. You know how when you write in pencil and you press onto the paper too hard that it leaves marks? It’s that kind of pain,” I tell him. It felt the same way with this situation too. Being nothing but a light sketch in his world made me glad. At least when I’d erase myself out, I wouldn’t leave marks for him to remember.</p><p>“My turn. What is one thing that would completely and utterly devastate you?,” I ask him trying to estimate the damage I’d do to him. He blushes then tries to ignore the question completely and I even tell him it was fine if he refuses to answer at all. “I didn’t want to tell you at first because it’s cheesy. But it would be losing her. If I lost her—I don’t know what to do. I’ve planned out our entire future together and having to find direction in life once more may get too hard.”</p><p>While the flower rested in the daylight, the firefly was there thinking if he and a flower could ever be together. All the flower knew that this bud he was dreaming of wasn’t her.</p>
<hr/><p>He was right. That would break him beyond repair. I was glad for a moment that he wasn’t talking about me. After all, he may have stayed but who would love a monster who only cares about their own bloodlust? “Time to lighten up the mood shortie. I know you hate yourself but what is your favorite thing about yourself?,” he asks me trying to make the atmosphere more cheerful. “I guess my eyes. You see it’s always been pointed out to me that my eyes aren’t symmetrical. The right one is larger than the left and it’s gotten pretty obvious. It’s a flaw but nonetheless, I like them.”</p><p>And maybe that was because everything may change in this ephemeral world, except my eyes. No matter what happens, at least I have something that will remind me that once I lived a life and saw all these unfold before me. “For my fifth question, please elaborate more on your future with her,” I request and his face lights up. “Wherever she’s going to college, I want to be there with her too. So we can finally attend the same school. Then whatever profession she wants, I’ll support her with it no matter how hard it may be. I’ll make sure she cheers for me if I do decide to go pro with volleyball. More than anything else, I want to wake up next to her each morning and let her know—I’m always here.”</p><p>“When we get older, after we finish college I’ll propose to her. I’d do all I can so it can be at the place we first met for everything to come full circle. She likes those things when people remember the important details like their birthday they haven’t told you about or the places in Miyagi she likes because their coffee is blended perfectly. Then after that, we’ll both save up so we can rent out an apartment then eventually buy a house while starting our family.”</p><p>The things I would give in exchange for this to happen to the two of us. “That’s so sappy,” I tease him and he rolls his eyes at me. He moves onto the next question of his—how drastic of a change would it be for me if we didn’t ever meet? “Well, a lot of minor details would change. For starters, I wouldn’t be here in a library because I hate it here when I’m alone. I’d probably be lonely but that’s fine. Nothing much would change I guess.”</p><p>Lies. Everything would change. I wouldn’t be in pain. I would actually have a future, I would be able to love without suffocating every few minutes. I would actually be happy alone. But would I change anything about our peculiar setup? No. I definitely would not. Knowing I’ll be leaving feels like one of those cliché at least we met scenarios.</p><p>“This might be weird to ask but it came up in conversation between me and Yutaro but I’m kind of asking on behalf of them. Don’t worry I didn’t tell them about it they just figured out when you guys were together at training camp,” I say and he looks at me annoyed at the fact they were watching him. “But what does she have that I don’t?”</p><p>Dumbfounded by the question, he even asks me to reiterate it. “Well, she has… You two are actually very similar. The only difference I think you have is you’re actually sticking by me with all these plans I make. But something she has that you don’t? I guess it’s her awareness. She’s aware of more things than you ever will be. I’m surprised you haven’t even caught on some things.”</p><p>If that was the only difference—then why isn’t it me? This is rather selfish but if that’s what he wanted then I could do it. Why does he have to choose someone else when I’m here? Then maybe we wouldn’t be both constantly hope for someone else to love us back.</p><p>We sat in silence for a few moments then he suddenly turns to me with a serious expression plastered across his face. “Why do you keep asking about her and her only?,” he asks with a mad tone. I gulp the flowers threatening to come out as he asks. “Is it wrong to be interested in your girl? I always have to get her leftovers so why don’t I learn about her?”</p><p>In reality, I was jealous. I was hoping that maybe it could be me—but it never will be me unless some miracle dawns upon us. You can be happy for them and wish it was you at the same time. Perhaps that’s why I asked too much so I could stab myself mentally for not being enough. “Think about yourself more. If you claim you’re not interesting, she’s the same.”</p><p>“Question about myself? Okay then. Why do you cover my ears with your earphones then talk?,” I ask him and he reaches for both ends of the earphones and plug them in my ears playing music. Like the jerk he was, he smirks while he gives me his answer. I glare at him angrily at his insult. “They’re for the words I need to say but sometimes I wish they’d be rather left unsaid.”</p><p>Maybe if I hadn’t admitted I like you—then this whole mess wouldn’t happen. Perhaps it would be better left unsaid.</p><p>He then places his hand on top of mine before bringing his other hand to my face. My heart was racing. The petals were suffocating me. I was blushing too hard. “Ichika, are you happy?,” he asks putting the hand on my face back on the table. “Yes. I am happy.”</p><p>Even if it pains me—to be able to see him smile and be more vocal is enough for me to be happy. It didn’t matter if I was dying. Death is inevitable. Yet as long as I can keep him happy and build him up for her, then it’s fine. “This sounds narcissistic but what’s your favorite thing about me,” I ask to avoid the awkward tension that would come up. “Not because this was your answer a while ago, but your eyes. I like how they look when you smile so please do it more often.”</p><p>As the moonlight cast upon them, the flower and the firefly were happy even without a reason to—they were happy.</p><p>“A serious question but will you leave me, Oikawa Ichika?,” he asks. I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I wanted to leave without him having to think it’s his fault. A simple message would be enough for me. I didn’t want him to count down the days too. So I had to lie to assure him at the least. I was a jerk for doing this, but it was the least painful way to slowly let him down. “I’m not.”</p><p>“Tsukishima Kei, out of all the people here why choose me?,” I ask seriously and he looks away again. “I don’t need a reason to choose you too. It just felt natural as if I’ve always wanted to do it,” he says unsure of himself too. “Last. What would you feel about having a future with me? Beyond high school, beyond college, beyond everything—you and me?”</p><p>It was an unusual question. I didn’t know what to feel as I knew I wouldn’t have one. “I’d be glad to spend that time watching you still hope for her while she rejects you time and time again. I might be busy when I go to law school but I’ll make time because you’ll end up embarrassed when you get stood up,” I tease while creating a future I hadn’t planned for on the spot. “Tenth question. After two years—why are you still by my side?”</p><p>“Same as my previous answer. There’s just something that makes me want to stay no matter what. It’s not like I’m drawn to you but it feels natural. As if my atoms are constantly glued to yours,” he says trying to make more and more elaborate explanations to bring down my awkward silence. “It’s your last question you better not waste it.”</p><p>I wasn’t planning to. I was simply saving the best question for last.</p><p>Of course, until now I had my anxieties about what I planned to do. He wouldn’t care—but what if he got the feeling he needed to see me and he was the one to find my lifeless body covered in blood and petals? Would he even attend my funeral if he found out? Would he resent me for leaving? I had come to terms with the fact I had to do this. There were other solutions but in the end, this is what I wanted to do. I actually even considered ignoring these for life but it would be impossible.</p><p>I tapped my fingers on the wooden library table and looked down. I silently smiled to myself as I was about to ask him the worst question of this game. “Kei,” I called his attention and he immediately looks at me. With a smile, I look up at him. “What if, just what if. What if one day I died and left you with nothing but a note, what would you do?”</p><p>Surprised by my words, he is taken aback. “Don’t ask such questions while smiling like a psychopath. I’d attend your funeral and maybe even make a speech,” he says with a straight face on. That was fine. I got my answer. He wouldn’t be impacted by it at all. If he would be, he would probably say it or place his earphones on me so I wouldn’t hear it. “Let’s go, it’s late,” he says beginning to pack up his things.</p><p>The flower finally had peace of mind that the firefly would be fine without her.</p>
<hr/><p>I run to the bus as we prepare to leave Aoba Johsai to go to Sendai Gymnasium. Today was the day. The day of the final round of the Spring Tournament. Today might be the last official game I’ll play and I’ll do it hiding the fact I know this may as well be the last. I longed to fight to keep going on this journey, but if this was the end what else could I do?</p><p>We walk onto the court and see our competition—Niiyama Girls’ High. “Captain,” a teammate taps my shoulder calling me as I stare off into the court realizing this is the last time I’ll be standing on the center court. This was it. Today, October 28 was the day I was going to let go of the thing that made me feel alive time and time again. I was saying goodbye to volleyball.</p><p>Looking back at them, I smiled. It eased their nerves somehow and we began warming up on our side of the court while more and more people came into the gym. Tsukishima wasn’t in the stands and I knew I had to be the one to fight off my own thoughts later on. As the game was about to begin, we went near our bench for a final talk.</p><p>“Captain any words?,” asked our coach looking at me tightening my ponytail. If this was the last time, I at least had to make them feel that this whole fight up to this point was worth it. “You guys know this, I hate sounding like my brother. But whatever happens on the court—whether or not we block every spike, we hit every toss and we receive every ball or if we’re being targeted in-game and with those in the stands—I believe in all of you,” I say to them. I rarely gave speeches but for the last time, I wanted to.</p><p>They tease me and we get on the court as soon as the game begins. The first set was rather easy on us. We had won 25-22 but I knew they hadn’t given their all. During the second and third sets, that’s when they would put more power in—both on the court and with the bystanders targeting us. That would tire everyone out and that was true as we lost the second set 25-27. </p><p>Perhaps it would be easier if I gave it up now.</p><p>Yet I didn’t. There was a suffocating feeling in my lungs even if I didn’t think of him—a sign it was getting worse each passing day. For some reason, I wanted to fight and push it further even if I knew I could just lose this. I wanted to run away—but I didn’t. The same feeling of pain that enveloped me that night by the window came upon me and I knew no one could save me now. No one but myself.</p><p>In the break before the start of the third set, I was sure I’d give up halfway. No more fancy plays and no more trying too hard. I was phased out now and I wanted to rest at that moment. I was a monster but I needed to finally break free from that and lay low. And as we were to come back to the court, my heart suddenly raced.</p><p>Once you completely lose sight of your dreams, you can never see them again.</p><p>“Hey! We’re going to nationals this year, aren’t we? Don’t you guys want to break their streak and rise from the ground? Don’t you dare get discouraged now and let yourself grow,” I suddenly say before as they turn around to face the court. They look at me and they smile. “Let’s win this,” I say and they all cheer. For a moment I had lost sight of the dream I took so long to be able to try to achieve.</p><p>I wanted to rest. I wanted to sit down. I wanted to leave this sport and never turn back. I wanted to be less of a monster. I wanted to give up. I also wanted to win. I also wanted to reach my goals. I also wanted to keep looking ahead of me. I also wanted to keep playing. I also wanted to stay here on the court. I knew there was an end to this, but perhaps it didn’t have to be right now.</p><p>We play with all our tenacity. The audience was surprised to see us work so hard. The third set finished with us in the lead with a score of 34-32. They weren’t backing down but that isn’t a reason for us to back down either. After all, if we really want something we have to fight for it. We have to stay with it even if it leaves us. I remembered the way he looked away talking about her and I was even more fired up to win.</p><p>In the middle of the timeout of the fourth set, we were all practically on fire. “You guys can calm down you know,” shyly says our coach as she looked at our yearning to score points. We were in the lead, 14-11. She just awkwardly laugh as we try to retain our concentration while catching our breaths at the same time. I look behind me as I see someone in my peripheral vision staring at me.</p><p>Tsukishima Kei.</p><p>“Ichika you better do your best. We’re going to nationals together whether you like it or not so you better win or else you’ll never meet the girl I like,” he says teasingly and I roll my eyes at him before walking back on to the court. I probably wasn’t going to ever meet her, it was an empty threat. In a way, however, his words kept the fire inside me burning.</p><p>We were finally at match point, but they were still pressing us so we’d mess up and create an opening for them. I wanted to win. I will win with them. As the ball flies over the net I watch it land into my teammates' hands causing it to float once more in the air. This was the perfect timing at the perfect angle. They purposely say another player’s name to faze Niiyama. I get into position to run along with the spikers and as the ball is about to make its descent, thoughts fill my mind.</p><p>Two years ago, I had fallen to the floor saving a ball. I spent that day in pain knowing it would haunt me, and it did. A year ago I had to cough up so many flowers after the game just to breathe. This year, I was going to break that streak. I shift my body into the mock setter’s position fast enough that it rattles them as I go up in the air. Everything was happening in slow motion as I pushed the ball upward and down straight into their side. </p><p>Chasing it, they all fall to the floor diving for it. But it had been too late as it touched the floor. With it, just like two years ago—I fell too. I fell on my knees screaming as we had gotten the last point for the match. 28-26. We had won. The other third years came piling on me as the audience cheered. “This year’s Miyagi prefecture representative for the girls is Aoba Johsai,” the announcer says as I feel tears slide down my cheek. I look for Kei in the crowd and to my surprise, he too was smiling at me. </p><p>We all get up to shake hands with Niiyama and to greet everyone who watched. We were happy. This wasn’t the day I say goodbye—it was the day I continued to look forward and run this path even if I already saw the end. All things come to an end, it’s just up to us how we’ll react to things that will determine our distance from it.</p><p>As we exit the gymnasium, our coach allows us to have the rest of the day off to rest. It was our reward for finally getting into the nationals. “You wanted to go to the nationals with me that badly,” a voice says and I look behind me to see Tsukishima. “No. I wanted to be there. I’d still do as well even if you didn’t call me. It used to be for Tooru but in the end, I didn’t want it to end here. I didn’t want to lose sight of my dream,” I say arguing back while looking directly at his golden-brown eyes. He smiles for a moment and I feel the suffocation in my lungs get worse. “You’re finally doing something for yourself.”</p><p>If there was one thing I’d ever regret in this lifetime, it’s the fact that I’ll never tell you how I feel. I’ll never tell you about the way you make me happy and the way you make my heart race. You’ll never know about the way you fill my lungs with flowers but at least you’ll know in the most subtle of ways that whenever I am with you, I bloom. Whenever I am with you, I remember that in the end, I have myself—no matter how bad of a monster I may be I still have myself.</p>
<hr/><p>As the third autumn came upon the two, it went on normally with the firefly rested against her. However, it was about time that the flower’s roots slowly started to die out.</p><p>The both of us end up in a dog café after much arguing. I pick up a puppy and stroke its fur as he scans the menu. “Kei,” I call him and he looks up as his cheeks turn pink. “Admit it—we look cute,” I say as the small Pomeranian licks my face. “She looks cuter. I’m not bringing you to a hospital if the dog bites you,” he says as he calls over a waitress and gives her our order. </p><p>I excuse myself to go to the bathroom to cough up the flowers that were now threatening to fill up my lungs. I noticed how there were now a few smaller whole flowers mixing in with the petals. I couldn’t do anything about those now. I’m even surprised they didn’t come earlier but if this was the price of seeing him happy while I was fooling myself, I’d be willing to pay it.</p><p>On the way back, I see him doing something quite unusual. “Don’t think of yourself as an afterthought or someone who gets her leftovers again but I invited her and I’ve gotten stood up yet again. I wanted you to meet her. She’s the afterthought this time because I wanted to congratulate you on winning your game. You did really great and your final setter’s dump was I don’t know—ah how do I tell her,” I see Tsukishima talking to myself as if he were rehearsing. He looked silly as he talked to himself while the dog watched him clueless.</p><p>I sit down and he looks shocked seeing me. “Tell me what?,” I tease him and he rolls his eyes. “Congratulations on getting into the nationals once more,” I say to him while pulling a box out of my bag. “I was too shy to give it to you along with the dinosaur keychain on your birthday,” I say sliding it over to him and he opens it to reveal a pair of brand new earphones.</p><p>He shyly thanks me and the awkwardness clears up when our food arrives. “That day in the library,” he says as I stir my straw in the iced coffee. “Do you mean what you said? Leftovers? If you really were the leftovers and the afterthought I would call you after she would stand me up not before. Think about yourself for once and don’t ever think you’ll always be an afterthought because you aren’t,” he suddenly says out of nowhere.</p><p>If that’s what he thought then why am I still second place when it comes to her. I stay there silent knowing if I spoke I would cry. “It’s fine Kei. Don’t push it too hard. I didn’t just know how to properly word it then,” I reassure him and at the same time he calms down a bit as I slide my hand on top of his. “Can we go home after this? I’m not feeling well,” I tell him as my chest tightens. “See I told you not to bring that dog to your face,” he teases and I laugh.</p><p>We walk out of the café and he takes out his earphones. “I’m going to test it out,” he says plugging it in his phone as he places it on me. Not just one, but two of them. Music is immediately blaring from it and he speaks as he looks for the next song to play. He was saying words he thought would be left better unsaid. He took one side out and we walked in silence together. We would occasionally look at each other and attempt to talk, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do so.</p><p>As he was about to drop me off, he presses the back of his hand against my forehead and there he realizes I was burning up. “You look like you’re about to pass out any second,” he mutters under his breath and tells me to go to my room immediately. I lay in bed wondering if all those times he spoke while I had his earphones on— I questioned what he was saying. I was knocked out of my trance by a literal knock on my window as I see him holding up a paper bag. “Don’t get me sick,” he says handing it and waving goodbye.</p><p>Inside were medicine. Painkillers, cold compresses, paracetamols, and vitamins. There also were two packets of strawberry mochi and a bottle of Yakult inside of it as well. I took out all the contents and see a note inside of it. The light yellow note contained a few words in his messy handwriting with ballpen ink that looked like it was borrowed from the store itself.</p><p>‘You’re well aware that I say things better left unsaid when you have the earphones on but do know whatever I said a while ago—I meant it. I only put it on you because it isn’t time yet. We aren’t in a rush anyways.”</p><p>We aren’t. I’m not in a rush to fulfill everything I ever wanted to do. I’m not in a rush to say goodbye to everything. I’m not in a rush to do as much things I want to do so I can go without regrets. I’m not in a rush to reach my dreams and let go of them at the same time. I’m not in a rush to give you up. We aren’t in a rush—because I’m the only one rushing.</p><p>As the flower’s heart fluttered and died at the same time, she kept thinking about the life the firefly led without her.</p>
<hr/><p>Shaking my teammates awake, the sun had risen and we were finally in Tokyo for the nationals. “Wake up or I’m leaving you on the bus,” I warn them as I pretend to shut the bus doors and they shoot up. We were staying at a fairly decent hotel a bit further away from the event areas. It was fine knowing I had to give up a better hotel closer to the gyms just so we could have our own bus to avoid the hassle of commuting. Tsukishima texted me that they too were in Tokyo and were staying at an inn. </p><p>I didn’t want to focus on the negatives, but this was my first, last, and only nationals. This would probably be my last trip to Tokyo too. Letting go of things is inevitable and I have to face the music now. These were going to be my first and lasts. Unless some miracle happens, these next three months were my final ones. It won’t be easy to let go of things but I can’t love him more so he’ll notice me when I know he has eyes only for her.</p><p>It's hard to let go of someone you love but their happiness is our happiness. If they are happy without us we will let them leave us even if it really hurts. At times, we ourselves might even have to accept that we must leave them before they leave us.</p><p>The first day was rather easy on us. We easily won the first game. It was a bore for me knowing I didn’t get as heated up as I wanted to. It was harder to play now with the petals being dominated more and more by whole flowers, so even if I wanted to I couldn’t if he was there. Everyone still had their eyes on me. I wasn’t known as a monster because they knew me more as ‘The Better Oikawa’ yet again. What made this whole ordeal more painful was the fact Tooru went home just to watch me play.</p><p>Pressure crept into the second day and we almost missed as our scores were at 2:1 with us in the lead. It was a close call that being even a step short would affect the whole game drastically. But we won and it was fine. I had to cough up so much flowers that day because he cheered for me during the final set when I was about to fall from fatigue. Aside from the practices that never seemed to finish, there were games and there was the fact everyone was watching. To add to that, I was suffocating.</p><p>There were whole flowers now. They were relatively smaller flowers but at their worst, they were too much for me to handle. They came out with blood and as if they were so much I would joke to myself they could make a bouquet. I look at myself in the mirror to only realize it would be harder to hide this now. I was getting paler and dark circles began to form under my eyes. For now, I could fix them with makeup but how would I hide this when I’ll face him for one last time?<br/>
At that moment, the flower realized that withering away was easier said than done.</p><p>Fixing my jersey before we stepped onto the court, I feel a sting in my chest. Flowers. “Take over for a while, I’ll be back in a few,” I tell my vice-captain before running to the restroom. There was blood. There were petals of different colors. They smelled nice. As I tiredly stumble through the hallways, I feel tired from having to cough up so much. “Ichika,” someone calls out to me.</p><p>I look up to see him. “Tsukishima,” I called out to the tall middle blocker. He looks shocked to see me. He frantically takes the underside of his jersey and brings it to my mouth. With that, he wipes it and I had only realized there was blood on my lips and near my chin. “Shoot this is so embarrassing,” I say bringing out my phone to check for any more impurities. I was the palest I ever was, I was getting thinner and there were bags under my eyes. Now I didn’t notice bloodstains on my face.</p><p>He checks to see if I have a fever. “Sit out this game. You’re on the court for all sets and you don’t even sit down when you’re in time out. Think about yourself for once,” he says lecturing me. “Come on. Don’t overreact Kei. I just busted my lips just a bit while practicing tossing last night,” I lie to him and he buys it for some reason. He walks away as I show him how it was all okay and then he suddenly turns back to me. “Take care of yourself. You look like a corpse. I don’t like it.”</p>
<hr/><p>Walking away from me, I feel a pain in my chest. I didn’t know why but that made me have hope for a few seconds. It felt like a relief for some reason. However, I just shrug it off. What was the point of dwelling on things if they weren’t going to make me feel better? Running back to my team, I see them tense from the game. It was the third round and I knew we could make it to the quarter-finals if we did our best. “Coach will buy us ice cream if we make it to the quarter-finals,” I say as a last resort to calm their nerves down.</p><p>I hear someone chuckle in the stands and I look up to see Tooru. “Maybe I should’ve said that instead of ‘I believe in all of you’ when I was captain,” he jokes and I feel more nervous. My heart started to race at the sight of my brother. He was the reason why I fought too hard to be here. I laugh it off as we proceed to the court. We had a different starting lineup with an extra setter in the midst knowing the team we were up against was great at offensives and we too had to up our game with that.</p><p>Entering the second set, we haven’t given our all yet. We were at a critical point in the set. Even if we won the first set, we couldn’t be confident. As we focused on using a more defensive approach in the first set which worked. Their attacks were surprisingly easy to handle but I had an ominous feeling it wasn’t their best yet. Often times, some teams can sacrifice the first set to either figure out the opponents, break them slowly, or give them an ego boost and to make them think they were going easy. We knew this and we weren’t planned to be fooled.</p><p>As the ball goes up into the air, we play with all our hearts until the perfect timing comes. If we tied at 24, we would be in a corner. We’d have to sacrifice the second set if it came down to the worst possible scenario. Our scores were at 24-23 and yet again, all eyes were on me. I could feel them staring at me waiting for the better Oikawa’s next move. The ball was thrown into the air as I received it. I ran to the back to get into formation with the other wing spikers as the other setter tossed the ball. They were all confused as the set was rather low and it would be difficult to hit it considering its distance from the net. There was a pain in my chest but I opted to toss it up high enough that it would land in their court. </p><p>There I watched the ball fall onto the floor as they tried to stop it from hitting the ground.</p><p>Cheers followed as the other team watched in horror. We had used their own attack against them. If the ball came into their possession at this last moment, they would definitely use it on us—we just had to do it before they did. In the end, all the weeks of them trying to match up with another setter was worth it. All the weeks of learning how to perfect an offense like that had been worth it.</p><p>“Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!,” they chanted around our coach after the game. “Ichika,” she scowls at me playfully as I smirk at her. The pain in my chest never left. They were probably having a hard time blooming or I was about to suffocate without noticing it. I thought to myself—what if I accidentally let them out? What would they say? I knew Tsukishima would try to get it out of me but I didn’t need his pity. I was set on my fate. “You did great there,” Tooru says snapping me out of my thoughts.</p><p>It was the first time he said this so genuinely.</p><p>I smile. It was a smile full of genuine happiness. I was happy. I engulf Tooru into a hug and he hugs me back too as a way to express how happy he was for me. “I know you pushed yourself too hard just to make my dreams come true. After we lost to Karasuno I hope you realize that after that match—this became my dream for you. I’m proud that you grew so much that you made it to the top,” he says patting my head and ruffling my hair just a bit.</p><p>Tooru excuses himself to run off somewhere again. I stood there smiling at how happy my team was to get to this point. A bittersweet feeling wraps around my heart as I remember this may as well be our last time to play together. Not just me—but the others as well. This was there last time with me and I had to make this feeling engrave into them. They called me a monster too, but they were still my team at the end of the day.</p><p>Smiling to myself, I was glad they were enjoying. “Oikawa you better come here and celebrate with us,” our coach says as they make space for me in their group hug. I walk towards them and let them embrace me. “Hey, not because we got through the quarterfinals means we’ll be more relaxed. It took me a lot of bribing for the school to allow us a bus, hotel rooms, and even an extra half-day for us to go around. Please make it worth all the trouble,” I tell them and they hug me even tighter.</p><p>As we walk back to the hotel to sneak in what little rest we could before practicing, I decided to walk around the gym a little more. I find my way to where a game is played. It was Karasuno’s match against a school I couldn’t recognize. Tsukishima wasn’t on the court and he watched by the sidelines. After a few rallies, he was put into the game letting their libero rest for a while. He stood out. The white number 3 on his jersey was all I could notice at that moment he served the ball. </p><p>If she was here, I hope she could see how great of a person Tsukishima is. He’s rude and sarcastic—but he can be the exact opposite of that. He knows how to cheer you up right after he brings you down. I don’t know what I see him in too—but if only she could see him from my point of view perhaps they’d be happy.</p><p>For a moment, Tsukishima looks at me. It felt like the first time I saw him. That day I laid my eyes on him during a practice match. In a swift and evanescent moment, I remembered him looking at me too as the golden-brown met the lighter ones. It felt ethereal as at this moment, Tsukishima looked at me and smiled before he ran to spike the ball straight down into the ground. He looks at me again and I feel a pain in my chest and a smile creep up on my face as if through his eyes he told me, “Did you see me? You better cheer for me.”</p><p>I walk out of the stands after their game. I had to cough up flowers again. Doing this was such a troublesome thing but in my mind, having to get them removed and never love him again was more troublesome. I only had to be with this for two more months anyways. In just a short while, I’d be okay already. It would mean I’d disappear but that was even better.</p><p>Coming out of the restroom I don’t wipe the little bit of blood that went down the right side of my mouth in order to maintain that lie about my busted lip. I was tired—my body was aching all over, my back hurt, the pain in my chest was still there and on top of all of that I had used up all my energy. Choosing to finally rest, I feel someone bump into my back. I look up to see Tsukishima laughing. “Isn’t that how we first talked. You bumped into me,” he teases.</p><p>“I couldn’t watch your match. I heard that you spiked a ball, however. Someone’s getting fussy about it but I can’t see why—they’re teammates with that hyper orange shrimp and I can spike better,” he says acting all jealous. I laugh at him. He looked like he wanted so much attention from me. Or maybe from her. But as her stand-in, I played my part. “If you’re trying to get me to compliment you about your spike in the game a while ago, then you did great. You really did. Congratulations on scoring a point I guess.”</p><p>Tsukishima blushes and denies all allegations that he was asking for compliments. “When I meet your girl I’ll tell her about this so she’ll notice you too,” I say but with every word I let go a sharp pain in my chests pierces me. He rolls his eyes and I use it as my cue to walk away. Out of nowhere, he suddenly hugs me from behind and I could feel the smile on his face form. “I’m not doing this to return the compliment or ask for more but you did great, Captain. I’ll tell the ‘someone’ who got fussy about your spike this too so you’ll notice him.”</p><p>The flower hated having this feeling of pain spread through her, but if it meant seeing the firefly’s smile it was worth enduring.</p>
<hr/><p>As the hours passed by, it was almost time for the quarter-finals game. I couldn’t sleep that night because I was busy trying to ensure our strategy would be spotless and I was coughing up flowers too. To add to that, I couldn’t get his words out of my head even if I tried too hard.</p><p>If someone on the Karasuno team had really gotten fussy about my spike, I hated to think that I wanted that someone to be him. It most likely wasn’t him though. Focusing my frustration on our gameplay, I take sips of the warm coffee trying to keep myself awake. I was tired but so what? If this was for my dream I could do anything even if it meant my body giving up after all this. </p><p>Standing up, I went to the balcony to think. Two months from now, I’d be dying, I’d die by suffocation caused by these flowers in my lungs from my Hanahaki disease. Two months from now, I’d leave Tsukishima nothing but a last note before I go. Two months from now, I’d have nothing left besides myself. </p><p>And if I were to stick to the plan I made for myself a year ago, then at least I’d die without regrets. If this was the only path I could take now—I’d leave when Tooru isn’t in Japan and I’d leave having done things that I’d badly regret not doing. It was fine as long as it meant Tsukishima lived without me having to constantly bring him down. “If I were to die, he’d just attend my funeral at the most,” I whispered to myself giving me assurance that in the end, it will be alright.</p><p>The next morning dawned upon us and despite the sleepless night, I wasn’t tired. I was probably fired up that my body chose to ignore the fatigue altogether. This wasn’t new at all. We arrived at the court two hours before our game to warm up and to go over plans once again. I hadn’t coughed up too much since I spent all night doing so. “Do you really want your last game on a side court? Yes—it may be the nationals but we’ve fought so hard. If you equate our worth to just a side court then think again and look at what we’ve been through,” I tell the team to try to get them fired up which seemingly works.</p><p>As the ball went into the air, we all did our best to try to win this game. Not much people had their eyes on us considering we were in a side court but there was still pressure no matter what. We can’t remove that anymore. In order to function, we must have something that makes us keep look forward and something that makes us want to keep fighting. If you’re lucky enough, they’re the same thing. </p><p>For me, however, I look forward because I had no choice but to do so and I keep fighting to break free. To break free from the chains of those words. Monster, the better one, and the list goes on. The more I fight, the more my bloodlust is satisfied as I watch my body give up on me. It’s a nice afterthought when you consider your own death. As the pressure piles up on me, the more dedicated I am to show them that if I were a monster, at least I came to terms with myself.</p><p>Two years ago, however, I met someone that made me look forward even more. As he told me that night I stopped looking forward that I needed to, it gave me a little push. With that push, I made it my goal to be better. </p><p>With the cheers of the crowd, I then realize the game was finally over. We had won and were to advance to the semi-finals tomorrow. We had won two out of three sets with the last one ending with a score of 28-30. I tried to catch my breath as the suffocation and exhaustion from the game spread through my body. “Captain. Take the rest of the day off. You look tired,” our coach says to me and brings me to our hotel room.</p><p>After coughing up all the flowers, I lay on the bed inhaling a fresh puff of air. I nearly died few moments ago if I had pushed myself a little further. But I had to wait because of that promise we made. Tsukishima is broken—and I didn’t plan to break him more by suddenly dying before graduation. As I take advantage of the time I can breathe steadily and free from suffocation—I feel my phone vibrate.</p><p>Tsukishima is calling you…</p><p>“Kei,” I call out to him as I answer the phone. “I heard you guys won. Not to flex or anything but we won too. We get to stay another day,” he says awkwardly as if he was forced to call me. “Congratulations. I feel like I intruded something by answering the call,” I say without thinking. “No, it’s just. I heard you’re stuck in your room right now because you looked as if you were going to die after the game. Ichika don’t you dare die on me.”</p><p>I was blushing for some reason. My end of the call remained silent as I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. “Anyways can I make a bet with you?,” he says shyly ending the awkward silence. “If we win tomorrow, I’ll tell you who she is—her name, school, everything that led the two of us up to this point. If we don’t I’ll still tell you who she is but I’ll only tell you with words that describe her,” he says. “Weird but okay. Good luck tomorrow,” I respond to him and I could just feel the smirk through the screen.</p><p>“If we lose, don’t think that I just didn’t want to do it. I want to tell you now,” he said before the beeping signaling the end of the call rings through the air. I smile to myself before coughing up more blood and flowers in the restroom. He sounded happy. Every time he talked about her, he sounded so happy that I sometimes can’t even explain it with words. He deserved this happiness.</p><p>Two months from now, the flower would be dying on her own terms and she had come to terms that perhaps she and the firefly would be never meant to be.</p>
<hr/><p>“Semi-finals. Center court. Don’t feel pressured by these words too much. Okay—I’m allowing you to feel nervous and to need a hug but I also need you to turn that into determination. Let’s show them we deserve to be here. Show them that we aren’t weak and we can overcome anything. Let those seeds you planted when you first started playing grow into the most beautiful of plants now. I always say this and I still hate sounding like my dear brother but it’s quite useful—I believe in all of you,” I say to the team before the game begins.</p><p>Tensions were high. The atmosphere was thick. We all needed something to lighten up the mood. “We believe in you too,” they say in an imperfect unison. I then signal them to get into our rotation for the game and with that came the unsaid notion that we needed to prepare for the worst. We were in the top four teams of this year’s tournament but it felt as if it wasn’t enough. </p><p>By the end of the game, I didn’t know what to do. Was I going to cry? Was I going to be happy? Was I going to pretend it never happened? With both of us nearing the deuce, the arena felt like a colosseum. We didn’t notice as their service happened and it resulted in a service ace. It was a battle of strengths and it came down to me and their genius setter.</p><p>She reminded me so much of Tobio. They were the same. They tossed for their victory—and by their, I meant themselves alone and not the team. Yet as she was about to dump the ball into our open front, I ran to block it causing a rift. Ur mid-air battle came down to us pushing the ball up against the other’s hands until she used her strength to push it off mine and my world fell apart as I heard the thud behind me.</p><p>We had lost to them. None of my teammates or even my coach could talk to me as I stared at the floor the whole time. If only I hadn’t chased that dump and just dived to receive it instead maybe we would still be in the fight. If only I hadn’t acted on my own. If only I wasn’t the monster I was right now. “Ichika,” a voice calls in front of me causing me to look up.</p><p>Reminiscent of that October day two years ago, I was alone in a surprisingly empty hallway crying to myself silently. This time around, it was the same except for the fact there was blood down the side of my mouth as I couldn’t bother myself to wipe it off after coughing up what felt like a whole bouquet of flowers. And just like before, as I look up I see Tsukishima Kei standing in front of me in his black and orange uniform partially covered by hi black Karasuno jacket. </p><p>He holds his hand up to me signaling me to grab it and I do so. I stand up with my hands still covering my face. “Stop crying, you look so ugly,” he teases while he pats my back. And out of the blue, he suddenly pushes me closer to his chest. I felt his arms wrap around me as I unconsciously wrap one of my hands around his chest. “I know you need this,” he says shyly. “Don’t worry we lost too. I’m in the same boat as you.”</p><p>His words weren’t that comforting but they felt enough to let me feel like I wasn’t alone at all. “I watched your game. You did well Ichika. No one could dive fast enough to receive the dump—even you. Blocking it was the only thing you could do if you didn’t want that point to be theirs. It was your only choice, so don’t you dare regret it for even one second,” he says whispering it into my ear as I continue to cry.</p><p>I couldn’t stop this feeling of crying. I don’t know how he’s okay with me sobbing as I hugged each other. To think of it, we were actually hugging each other at that very moment inside this lonesome hallway. “You told me back then that everyone thought of you as a monster because you did too much that others didn’t have the chance to win. Well, you’re not a monster for making yourself happy. No one can stop you from fighting until your last breath if that’s what you want.”</p><p>“At the end of the day, you have yourself so why should you listen to others? You’re not a monster for choosing what your heart beats for. You’re not a monster for trying to make yourself happy with your results.”</p><p>Tsukishima Kei really does feel like home.</p><p>With his sleeves, he wipes my tears. “Now I’m done crying, tell me about her. Our deal,” I tease him and he rolls his eyes. Realizing I was still in his arms, we let go of each other upon realization. His cheeks were a light tint of pink but mine felt like they were burning up. “I thought you’d forget. I’ll tell you but I didn’t tell you when, did I?,” he says laughing at me. “Whatever.”</p><p>Walking away from him, I do so without any regrets at all. I didn’t want to but thinking about the night before the fourth game—I had an agreement with myself that I would slowly but surely start to let go of Tsukishima Kei.</p><p>Unbeknownst to the firefly, the flower was swaying with the breeze that pulled her away from him.</p>
<hr/><p>After the long day, we all remained silent. None of us could talk. We had an extra day and a half before heading back to Miyagi and I wasn’t going to let us all spend it in despair. “Guys, let’s cheer up. It was a great match. We can’t do anything about it now. But I know we can fight for a better one in the future. We all did well. And after we turn this page of our books remember this,” I say as we all sat at the breakfast table. It was my job as captain to give us our old spark back. </p><p>“It’s impossible to not miss receives. It’s impossible to be able to block every spike in your life. It’s impossible to hit every toss a setter gives to you. It’s impossible to not feel failure or disappointment, but remember there are times for us to all do better. If someone tells you to stop because you’re trying too hard—no one can stop you from fighting until your last breath if that’s what you want. Someone told me those words and I think we all need it.”</p><p>Tears started forming in their eyes as they all came to tackle me down to the floor. The second and first years then form a line and thank us third years for fighting with them. We then decided to enjoy the rest of the day by strolling through Tokyo in groups so we could do what we wanted to. I looked at them as they discussed among themselves where they’d go. “Ichika. I remember benching you because you were too driven by your so-called bloodlust two years ago in October. Who knew that you’d grow into this? You’re telling them to try to be better while accepting their own mistakes when I watched you hate your own mistakes. I’m proud of you, Captain,” our coach says and pats my head.</p><p>Perhaps he made me realize that it doesn’t matter if I’m a monster or a human—all that matters is how I accept both sides of myself.</p><p>“I had to learn the hard way,” I say smiling and she puts her arm around me. “You really grew up. I wonder who caused this?,” she teases me as I go red. “No one! Myself of course, I don’t need to rely on others just so I can grow,” I say defensively as she laughs at my embarrassment. She then sends me off to my group and tells me to enjoy the time we have left. She told us we deserved to take a break from this suffocating world.</p><p>My world was always suffocating though. I just found air to breathe whenever I was with him—even if he was the reason my breathing space grew smaller. </p><p>We spent the day out. Eating street food, strolling through the Tokyo streets, and checking out multiple shops. I was insistent on taking pictures as the anxiety of them forgetting me crept up on me. We were drained from all the matches but we still somewhat had the energy to let go of our mistakes and look at our missing pieces as room to grow. So, this is what connecting with your team feels like? Too bad this will be the first and last time I’ll ever experience this very feeling.</p><p>“Oikawa-san, this will look good on you please buy it,” a second year in my group begs as she hands me a bracelet with the phases on the moon on it. “Get me another one, I’ll be buying two,” I shyly say and she looks at me surprised. I buy them and as cliché, as it sounded, I was supposed to give both to Tsukishima. One for him and one for his girl. </p><p>I hadn’t talked to him all day and it was fine. I was slowly distancing myself from him again. Especially after yesterday, I had just walked away from him as if I wasn’t crying while hugging him. It made me feel bad for leaving just like that. I was so used to him walking away from me that I never fathomed the feeling of me doing the same thing. But yet again, he said he’d just attend my funeral and nothing else.</p><p>That night, my team was able to sleep with smiles on their faces. In a span of 24 hours, their feelings of grief and regret were replaced by feelings of enjoyment and happiness. After coughing up the flowers, I was able to look at them sleeping peacefully. It was past midnight and I was too tired to move around so I lay in my bed. Out of nowhere, however, I found myself putting on Tsukishima’s hoodie from years ago and walking out of the hotel.</p><p>I sat under a tree as the night lights of the Tokyo skyline illuminated the sky. It was cold but for some reason, I felt warmth drawing closer to me. I just sat there for a few minutes not knowing what to do until I heard a familiar voice behind me call my name.</p><p>Tsukishima Kei.</p><p>He was wearing a white hoodie with a dinosaur on the pocket. If I could recall, he said it was a Baryonyx. “What the hell are you doing here?,” he says as he rushes towards me as I turn around. “I don’t know. I just felt like it. Why are you here?,” I direct the conversation back at him. “Well, I was supposed to text you to ask if you were awake so we could talk and guess what.”</p><p>Laughing at him, he sits down and places the thin blanket he brought. “You’re only wearing shorts as your bottoms. It’s still winter you’re going to freeze to death,” he says wrapping the material around my legs to protect it from the snow falling through the tree’s branches. “Anyways I felt bad for leaving you hanging yesterday,” he confesses and I look at him. “Sorry I walked away. I was tired. I’m sorry.”</p><p>The tip of his fingers make contact with my head as he pushes it down to touch his shoulders. “So,” he says playing with his fingers. “First of all, she’s kind. She puts others before herself even. She’s the type of person to give up her life if it means others will live. She’s too kind sometimes that others think of it as a free pass to step on her,” he says. The way the words left his mouth reminded me of when I still was so sensitive to feelings. I remembered everybody keep calling me a monster just because I never said anything back then.</p><p>“Second, she’s really beautiful. Stunning to say the least. She just stands out—not like a sore thumb but rather like a light in the middle of an endless void of darkness. When she smiles, it feels alluring. I always tell her how beautiful she is but words can’t describe the way I fall in love with her when she smiles at me. When her brown eyes grow small when she smiles or when her hair flows in the wind it feels like love at first sight all over again,” he says as his cheeks begin to be colored pink.</p><p>She is lucky. “She’s smart too. She pretends not to be a know-it-all but when I ask her to give me a sentence she forms an entire paragraph expounding on every detail of the subject. She even does it with flowery words. When she’s in her element—she even does better as I’ve seen her make tremendous moves even Tadashi or anyone I know haven’t thought of doing. She’s dedicated too. She’ll learn an entire game or play if it means a better chance at winning.”</p><p>“She loves coffee too. She rarely gets it warm and she told me she wasn’t a fan of strawberry shortcakes but her face lights up when we order it anyways. Umm… I don’t know how to explain it but she seems perfect to me. She’ll tell me and even insist I’d leave her one day because of how bad of a person she is—but I never will leave her. It sounds so cheesy but the moment I knew I loved her, I wanted to stay by her side. I know she’s staying too, so I’m fine,” he says smiling. “Kei, you look happy. Really happy.”</p><p>“I am. I make playlists for her too. She doesn’t know it or probably hasn’t noticed it but when we’re together I play them. I don’t know how to express my feelings but I try to use music to do so. I would even send them to her but it might be troublesome and it might make me feel as if I’m obligating her to do so. She hates troublesome things, so I keep them to myself,” he speaks as I remember Kindaichi and Kunimi telling me about how they saw him making someone a playlist.</p><p>He went on describing her and I smiled. He looked like he was home—not with me, but rather talking about her. I realized the things he used to describe her, were ways you could talk about me too. If we were in a world without me having Hanahaki and I heard him telling someone else these words, I would believe it was me. But too bad we aren’t in that situation. I know it isn’t me.</p><p>I take out the bracelets from a while ago which I stuffed into my pocket. “This is for you two. One for you and one for her,” I tell him handing him the bag. “I’m happy for you two. You better make her say yes when you ask her out or you’re treating me to a lifetime of iced coffee,” I joke and he glares at me in response. He takes the bag and opens it to reveal the bracelets. He reaches for my wrists and places one of them on me. He asks me to put the other one on his wrist and he holds them up looking at how they glisten in the moonlight. “I fit the bracelet on you to see if it fits her. You’re about the same size.”</p><p>“Want me to tell you her name?,” he speaks as he puts our wrists down. I nod yes in response and he smiles. He looks at the branches of the tree we were under and then the night sky. He then looks back at me and stares at me for a few moments until smiling. He leans in to whisper his answer but then stops. “I’ll tell you when the timing is perfect. March. We’re not rushing anyways, I want it to be perfect,” he says instead and draws himself away from my ears.</p><p>At around two in the morning after talking, we then decide to go back to bed, “The bracelet,” I call after him before he sends me up to my room. “Keep it,” he says and my eyes go wide. “Keep it for now,” he reiterates as he waves me good night.</p><p>I coughed up almost all whole flowers that morning.</p><p>As the early morning came upon the two, the moon had watched their story unfold and ached for them both as both the flower and the firefly hid something from the other.</p>
<hr/><p>Two months passed by quickly. We were both focused on studying that even the times we spent together were devoted to studying and studying only. Yet as March dawned upon us, it was time for graduation. It was time to part ways. It was time to let go. It was time for him to ask her out. It was time for me to suffocate.</p><p>My condition had gotten worse. There were visibly dark eyes bags under my eyes and I was pale that everyone who saw me pointed it out. I was losing more and more blood each time I coughed up those flowers ever since the middle of February. It was terrifying to see myself lose more and more life slowly as I would look at myself in a mirror.</p><p>Today was the day of our graduation. I and Tsukishima had agreed to meet the day after our ceremonies. Tomorrow was a big day for the both of us. He mentioned on the call he’d ask her out tomorrow after we meet. After we’ll meet—that’s when I plan to fully stop this feeling of breathing in a clump of flowers and suffocate. He would be the last person to see me.</p><p>I watched as my classmates poured into the graduation hall and settling into their seats. On this rare occasion, my parents decided to be home—mostly because Tooru convinced them to. Tooru couldn’t due to his schedule and our other sibling said they’d just catch up due to their work schedule. Of course, I understood this but it was still painful to see that they couldn’t even be there for me.</p><p>But if they would have known, they would all be here. </p><p>Sitting in my seat, Kunimi and Kindaichi approach me. “We’re graduating now. We all better end up at the same college,” Kunimi says slightly teasing Kindaichi. “Let’s take a picture. For the memories,” I say pulling a camera out of my pocket and asking someone to take a picture of us. We posed for the pictures and I had a bittersweet feeling in my heart as we smiled. After today, I would just be a memory to these two.</p><p>It was selfish to choose death. But I knew it was the right choice. I’d rather not live than live a life afraid of loving anyone afraid that I’d have to let them go. “Ichika are you crying?,” asks Kindaichi as his hand makes contact with my face. “Pretend I’m not,” I say wiping them with the sleeves of my uniform. “Hey, stop being so sad. We’re all going to the same college, aren’t we? It’s not as if the world is ending or we’ll be separated for good,” Kindaichi says rubbing my back to try to cheer me up.</p><p>And what if today was truly the last time we’ll see each other?</p><p>Plastering on a fake smile, I tell them to go back to their seats knowing the ceremony was about to begin. We all agreed to have lunch after this knowing dinner was for our families. That is if my parents were still here when evening came. As the ceremony began, I sat there feeling nothing but the flowers in my lungs blooming, fatigue, and numbness. I was just tired of not being able to sleep properly for two weeks because I had to let them out so frequently. </p><p>When it was almost my turn to be called, I tried to look for my parents in the crowd. They were in the far back and I assumed they showed up late. “Oikawa Ichika,” they called my name as I stepped forward to receive my diploma. There were claps as we were required to do so. In the midst of those claps, there were whispers. For sure, I knew they were about me. They were probably calling me a monster or something else. </p><p>Before heading out of the school, my juniors met me and the other third years as we took one last peek of the gymnasium we spent three years training in. “Thank you for being with us,” they all say bowing which flusters us. “Get your heads up and look at us. As your captain—I mean former captain—I’d like to tell you all that you’ll achieve your dreams one day. Thank you for fighting with us as well,” I say with tears in my eyes. We all came together for a group hug until eventually parting.</p><p>I walked out of the gates of Aoba Johsai and looked back one last time. “Sayonara,” I whispered to myself as I let go of the school that I had attended for three years. I couldn’t do anything but to let go of it even if it surprisingly gave me memories of happiness.</p><p>During lunch with Kunimi and Kindaichi, we ate out at a restaurant near the school. “We’ll still be split up. Kunimi is going for accountancy, I’ll be doing law and you’ll be doing business management,” I say as we go over our admission letters. It was a pain to apply for colleges even if I would never go to them. For a moment, they made me want to live. But I was tired. Not from Hanahaki but from life itself.</p><p>18 years of my life was all fighting. Fighting to feel and be alive. Fighting to seem human in front of others. Fighting for happiness. I was done fighting now. I needed rest too—and this was the best deal I could get to soothe my never-ending weariness. Perhaps I would finally get to reach these dreams I convinced myself I wanted to achieve in an alternate timeline. In an alternate lifetime, another life and another time I’d live.</p><p>Lunch ended abruptly when Kindaichi’s mother called him home for their own celebration. Kunimi and I stayed at an ice cream place afterwards to pass the time. “Akira,” I called him as he was trying to remove the sprinkles off his ice cream. He looks up at me with a confused expression on his face. “If I die, tell him not to blame himself,” I say suddenly and a shocked expression paints his face. “Why are you suddenly saying that?”</p><p>For some reason, I trusted him. I kept my heart guarded but Kunimi was one of the few I let in from time to time. He was my final resort in my situation. “You may think this is dumb or something but I feel like I’m going to die soon. It just feels certain. If I do—then tell him it isn’t his fault. It’s up to you who you think I’m referring to,” I say as he still remains confused. After that, I tell him I have to go as my parents texted me to come back home already.</p><p>“Our daughter has finally graduated,” my father says as we sit at a table in a high-end restaurant. After getting home, they made me change into a white dress and they dragged me into this fancy restaurant. It was just our family having dinner and for once, I felt like we were together. We had Tooru with us via video call and he actually even bought a meal to ‘share’ with us.</p><p>This was the first and last time we’d feel like a real family.</p><p>We ate casually. For once, I felt like they actually loved me. Too bad they wouldn’t be seeing me alive after tomorrow. However, the night was interrupted. “Ichika, when you’ll become a lawyer don’t worry you won’t have trouble getting a job. Our company will immediately hire you as one of our lawyers. You’ll start out as an apprentice of some sort to Attorney Fujioka. I don’t really get your course but that’ll be your life after college,” my dad says and all I could do was agree.</p><p>“Don’t worry. You have your love life all to yourself. If you like someone go for them—you’re of age now. You can date them but they have to go through your dad’s approval,” my mom says slightly teasing me to try to get me to say who I like. “I don’t like anyone though. Akira and Yutaro are just friends,” I say denying anything and hoping he wouldn’t come up in conversation.</p><p>They kept talking and the atmosphere fell thick as the night progressed. It ended with us bringing them to the airport so they’d catch their two in the morning flight back to wherever they came from. As we got home, I was afraid I’d stain my dress while coughing up flowers so I changed into a new outfit. There, I realized I was wearing the necklace he gave me and her bracelet during the ceremony and the dinner.</p>
<hr/><p>I sigh as I fall on my bed. My bare arm wipes off the blood on my mouth. This was my last night. It was a bittersweet thought to think of. From my second-floor window, I sit there thinking about how Tsukishima was able to climb this in the winter that night. I climb up on the roof to look at the stars for one last time. The night sky was dark. It sparkled as the stars twinkled and the crescent moon illuminated a small area around itself.</p><p>Suffocating myself right now would be such an ideal sight. But I had to meet him for one last time. I lay there staring at the sky and thinking about how I’d be a part of it tomorrow. My lungs filled with the cool air of the night and it left quickly. I close my eyes and lay there.</p><p>Kei is calling you…</p><p>Quickly answering the call, I started to worry if it were just an accidental call. He stays silent on his line but suddenly speaks when I say sorry for answering. “Ichika,” he says in a sleepy voice which makes me blush. “Let’s change our meeting time. Just right before the sunset. I want you to be there when I ask her,” he says the nervousness evident in his voice. “Okay. Good luck,” I tell him knowing the Hanahaki would probably kill me by the time I got home.</p><p>He agrees to meet me at the library café. Tsukishima reminded me of why we stopped going there because we gave them too much profit but I insisted. I insisted on it for everything to come full circle, and for the memories. After that, we’d head to the forest afterward since they’d meet there. His plans seemed perfect. If my last few hours were spent trying to help him get the girl, I’d still do it. </p><p>“Good night. Wear something nice tomorrow,” he says before ending the call and I climb down to my room as I lay in bed smiling to myself. Tonight was going to be a sleepless night. While on the call, I had coughed up flowers thrice but I just told him I was feeling cold that’s why I had a coughing fit. As I got back to my room, I coughed up more and more flowers. My lungs felt full already. Any moment, they’d burst out with evening primroses covered in blood. </p><p>Just like that, the flower was slowly succumbing to her own fate as the firefly didn’t take notice.</p>
<hr/><p>The next day dawns upon me and I immediately get ready. I wore a plain white skirt with a cream sweater. I top it all off with a black coat and black boots. My hair was let down. I actually looked nice for once. This was my last outfit. I made sure my final goodbye to him was ready. For one last time, I fixed my room and placed the letter for my family neatly under my pillow. </p><p>It was a beautiful day. It was a beautiful day to die. Some cherry blossoms outside our house were beginning to bloom. This day felt like the most ethereal day to die. I put on the pink daisy necklace and wrapped the phases of the moon bracelet around my wrist. I was going to let him take it later and with that, I’d say goodbye. As the afternoon progresses, everything had been fixed. After all the preparations, I boarded a train. I then receive a text from Tsukishima as I got off the train.</p><p>Kei (Sent at 4:53 PM, March 15)<br/>
[I’m waiting for you in front of the entrance you better hurry up]</p><p>Ichika (Sent at 4:56 PM, March 15)<br/>
[I’m already here hold on]</p><p>He looks up from his phone and takes off his earphones and smiles walking towards me. “Aren’t you nervous?,” I tease him and he glares at me. “Of course I am,” he says. He had a bouquet of flowers in his right hand. Those weren’t for me but he’d be bringing flowers for me in a different context soon enough. We sit inside and it felt nostalgic, to say the least.</p><p>A surge of emotions runs through my body as I remember the first time we hung out. That same feeling of comfort ran through me as I remembered our conversation after we got off his bike.</p><p> <i>“I thought you wanted to cling onto me longer, Oikawa.”</i> </p><p> <i>“You wish. Stop calling me Oikawa. You’ll think of my brother every time you’re with me.”</i> </p><p> <i>“Okay, Ichika.”</i></p><p>Ichika. What an ironic name for a girl who would get Hanahaki disease and throw up a thousand flowers instead of solely one flower. What an evanescent moment for this bittersweet to take over my heart.</p><p>
  <i>“You really want to stay around me? I hope you don’t regret that?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I can hear you. If I do regret it then so what? You’ll just like be any other person.”</i>
</p><p>And until the end, he did stay. But I want to know if for a moment— even a split second, he regretted meeting me? Was I just any other person to Tsukishima Kei? I didn’t have time to get the answers to these questions now. This exact moment was the last time I’d be with Tsukishima Kei in this life.</p><p>Tsukishima calls a waitress and orders iced coffee and strawberry shortcake. That wouldn’t be too bad for a last meal. I smile at him as he tells me all about her. “Kei,” I call out to him in the middle of his gushy rant. “You’ll do well today. I’m sure she’ll say yes,” I tell him reassuring him. I begin to take off their bracelet and he stops me. “I wanted you to wear that.”</p><p>My heart was racing. There was an undeniable pain in my chest as he sad those words. “But I got it for you,” I say continuing to take it off. If I was going to keep it, I didn’t want him to look at it and remember how I left—that is, if he cared in the slightest bit. “No. It’s yours,” he insists forcing me to give in knowing I didn’t want our last conversation to be an argument.</p><p>We suddenly notice the sky turning pink as the sun begins to set. “Didn’t you say you want to ask her out at sunset?,” I say to him as we walk out of the café for a better view. “She has somewhere else to be at this time, so I’ll delay it until night,” he explains as he unconsciously grabs my hand. </p><p>This timing. This scenario. This moment. This was it.</p><p>I take out my phone pretending to get a text that I needed to head home in an instant. It was dark out already when I did this and I had watched my final sunset with him. “Tsukishima, I’m sorry I really have to go now,” I say. He looks at me confused and planning his next move. As I had planned, I pull him into an embrace. “I’ll make it up to you someday. I don’t know when but one day I will,” I say before running off leaving him there.</p><p>I’m sorry, Tsukishima.</p><p>As soon as I got home, I felt the sensation of flowers continuously growing. They were growing at an alarmingly fast rate. It was frightening but this was the path I had chosen. I take out the letter from underneath my pillow and place it on my bedside table hoping they’d look at it. And there in the restroom, I felt pain. Nothing but pain.</p><p>Flowers on the floor painted red with blood.</p><p>A girl on the floor suffocating as something sprouted out of her.</p><p>Then it had gone black.</p><p>As the firefly tried to process what happened, the flower had withered away.</p>
<hr/><p>“Ichika, I’m home!,” called out her older brother Tooru entering their house with his luggage. His flight had been delayed resulting in him not making it home or the day of her graduation. The house was empty. It was dead silent. He walked around and knocked on her door before eventually barging in. There he found the room to be clean and spotless.</p><p>There was something eerie about it, however. He knocked on the bathroom door and got no response. He wanted to open it, but that would violate his sister’s privacy. Yet he still did it. There he found the white tiles covered in red, his sister on the floor, and flowers surrounding her. </p><p>He wished he made it in time in order to try to save his sister. He just found about her suffering in the letter she left.</p><p>
  <i>Oikawa Ichika was officially ruled dead at 8:12 PM on March 15.</i>
</p>
<hr/><h4>Pink daisies.</h4><p>They were always her favorite flower for some reason. I don’t get how a clumsy girl who is also dubbed as a genius setter that rarely opens her heart to anyone would favor a flower like this. It was unusual, but I thought it was exactly like her. It was one of her unusual choices that in a way still made perfect sense.</p><p>Well, Oikawa Ichika probably viewed me past her brown eyes that way. She probably thought spending time with me was one of her unusual choices that in a way still made perfect sense.</p><p>It had been two years since I last saw her face. Her smile. Her eyes. I never saw her again after that day.</p><p>I can remember exactly how she let me hanging back then.</p><p>I looked at her disappear into the horizon as she had to go home. How tragic. The timing was perfect. Everything at that exact moment was beyond perfect. It felt too good to be true—and it was. I sigh to myself setting her free as I clench the bouquet in my hand. “I’ll try again,” I tell myself.</p><p>I was supposed to confess to her that day.</p><p>But she left. I then went home and sulked there. I wasn’t rejected or anything, I was just down knowing today was supposed to be the perfect timing for my confession. Regret blossomed in my heart realizing I should’ve taken the multiple opportunities I had. I should’ve told her that day in the library or that night in Tokyo. After all, that girl I talked to her about was no one else but herself.</p><p>As I lay in my room sulking, I then feel a vibration in my pocket. It was near midnight and I didn’t remember putting my phone in my pocket. Nonetheless, despite the multiple red flags I reached into my pocket to find Ichika’s phone. I looked surprised as it had an alarm set for 11:11 in the evening. I turn it off to see her wallpaper set as a picture of us in the forest.</p><p>Curiosity got the best of me and I looked into it more. In small letters wrote the words ‘open’ printed onto the corner of the picture. I slide it up and there I found the contents of her phone that could easily be accessed. “This idiot, if she dropped this somewhere she’d be lost,” I say commenting on her lousy behavior. I then realize it felt oddly empty. Nothing in her notes or gallery. No apps, nothing. </p><p>Noticing a notification in her messages app, I open it. There, I see a single conversation between her and herself she sent at 8:12 this morning.</p><p>
  <i><b>Kei,</b></i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hey, so I guess if you’re reading this then my plan followed through. Did you get her to say yes to you? Are you two dating now? Will I be your official third wheel? I’m okay with being the afterthought—she is your girlfriend after all.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Anyways, I guess I should explain myself. By the time you’ll receive this I’ll be dead. I’m sorry. Okay, here it goes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Two years ago on that day we met on August 8, I developed a disease. Hanahaki disease. Maybe you’ve heard about it. The Hanahaki Disease is a disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings—romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough—or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>That day, I admitted to having feelings for you. After that, I started coughing up flowers. Your favorite evening primroses to be exact. As you may have figured out, I chose to die. I can’t love you so you’d return my feelings. After all, you were in love with another. I hope you two are happy. I hope she makes you smile the way I wanted to make you. Tsukishima you better marry her or you’ll piss me off real good. I know you love her with all your heart so please do it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>But anyways, I wanted to say goodbye. This is the last time you’ll ever hear from me. The theory of the multiverse states that there are infinite parallel universes containing every possible situation. It makes me happy because I know somewhere, you love me back. How unfortunate that it isn’t in this universe.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Tsukishima Kei I want you to find happiness. I know you’ll just forget about me. After all, you have her. You’ll be fine. I trust her to take care of the only boy I ever loved. I just wanted you to know that all this time, you were the only person that managed to stay. But that isn’t why I love you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I love you because you’re you. You’re the sarcastic six feet tall middle blocker who lives off of strawberry shortcakes. You’re the cold but soft deep inside boy I met on the fourth of May after I accidentally bumped into him. You’re the only person I came to trust fully and the only person who accepted the part of me that was a monster. To be frank with it, allow me to steal your analogy. If she is your assurance, then you are mine—even if I never will be yours.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I’m selfish for choosing this path. But perhaps this was the only thing I could do. It would be a greater pain to not be able to love you. You were fine with me dying suddenly anyways. And if suddenly you aren’t—treat me as the monster I always have been. Resent me all you want, perhaps that’d be even better. Forget about me if it hurts you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>And yet again, I don’t even know if I made an impact to make a dent in your life this deep.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>This is getting rather long I guess. Kei I want you to be happy. Don’t blame yourself for this. It isn’t your fault that I fell for you which resulted in me getting into this mess. Anyway, I hope you’ll be happy. I hope that you two enjoy café dates as much as we both did. I hope you call her every night and remind her how lucky she is to have you. I hope you take her to the moon for me.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Time and time again, I hope you two gain all the things you deserve to have. I hope you tell her everything on your mind—don’t you make her wear earphones then speak when you know she can’t hear your words. I hope that when you grow older, you’ll achieve more dreams. You’d be great as a staff at the Sendai City museum by the way. Your interest in history and pre-historic things will surely invoke happiness into others. I hope you don’t forget that once in your life you made someone the happiest they ever would be.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Well, this is it I guess. Thank you for the best three years of my life. Thank you for all the promises—even my broken ones. I hope everything goes well for you. You deserve the universe and more than that. I don’t regret spending any of my time with you. Time might separate us right now but even still until then let's stay forever. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>At least we collided, we've been together. But we aren't meant for each other.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>At least we met. And hopefully, one day we will again.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>See you when the road decides it’s time for us to be together again, my firefly.</i>
</p>
<hr/><p>I didn’t know Ichika was great at pranking. She’s probably hiding somewhere afraid to see me. But I want to tell her—no I didn’t get her and no she never became my girlfriend because she left that day and never came back. She even left her phone with me and gave me this letter as a prank. </p><p>I stuff her phone back into my bag. I planned to reformat it and sell it to make me extra money for my college textbooks. Sometimes I wondered how seriously she took this prank. I saw her brother devastated after I received the prank letter. I saw her friends and even Kageyama Tobio devastated in ways as well. She even dragged people into this prank to make it believable. How childish.</p><p>I look at the bracelet she gave two years ago still on my wrist and smiled to myself discreetly. She bought it for me and the girl I liked but what she didn’t know was it was going to end up with her anyway. Sometimes, I wish I confessed that night and I wouldn’t be waiting for her to come back. I never told her that all this time, it was really her.</p><p>If you could count that time when we dried off after running and dancing in the rain on her birthday, then I have told her. I put my earphones on her and told her how I felt that moment. She never heard them of course, but I wanted the perfect timing. I kept waiting for the perfect timing to the point that it never actually came to me. How petty of this twisted luck I had.</p><p>I left my classroom and went back to my small dorm room near the university to delete everything off of the phone. What would I do with a joke anyway? It didn’t even matter. She was just joking. She probably planned that years in advance that she even smelled like evening primroses so I’d believe it. There’s no way Ichika would actually be dead.</p><p>Clicking the reformat button, everything on the phone was deleted. I dropped it to the floor as a sudden pain raged through my chest. It felt like I was burning. I then felt something in my throat desperate to come out and as I opened my mouth, flowers and blood fell on the floor. This couldn’t be real. This was all in my head. Then I began to cough up more and more to the point I barely could breathe.</p><p>The firefly sought for his beloved pretending he had not known she already has withered away from him.</p>
<hr/><p>Waking up in the hospital, multiple machines are attached to me. I look around confused until a nurse notices that I regained consciousness. “You were brought here because of a severe attack of Hanahaki disease. Your flowers are pink daisies. Someone found you in your dorm room as they heard choking noises and they were concerned. Your case is different rather. You developed this after deleting the last piece of evidence your beloved reciprocated your feelings. As they have now passed, your condition is more severe,” she explains to me. “Would you like to opt for a surgery?,” she says in a calm manner. “No. Kill me,” I say and she looks at me shocked.</p><p>“I said kill me.”</p><p>She could do nothing but nod her head and said she’d inform the doctors about my decision. I then take her phone and type my own message. What the hell was I doing? Was I really going to die because of being breathless? I sighed out of frustration as more and more flowers came out of my mouth as I typed.</p><p>Laying back into bed, the doctor talks to me. He kept asking questions. “Are you sure? You have a whole life ahead of you,” he says trying to convince me. Well, I was sure of my choice. Nothing could make me change my mind. “Okay then. You will be euthanized. Please prepare for your operation that will take place in an hour. Any final requests?,” he asks getting up from the chair beside my bed. </p><p>“Here. Give this to my brother Akiteru and make him mail this to Oikawa Tooru. Whatever happens, this old phone needs to reach him,” I say handling the phone with care and he nods. This was it. I had a future in front of me and no one could understand why I’d rather die than stop loving that girl. She even got the hospital on this whole prank. You really are childish, Ichika.</p><p>Looking at the bracelet she gave, it felt surreal. She promised she would stay, but here I am on my deathbed. If only she hadn’t gone back that day—perhaps we could live this life waiting for us.  Too bad she went home and then never came back.</p><p>My final hour passed by quickly. My family was dealing with all the paperwork as I spent that hour bidding farewell to Yamaguchi and the few other people I cared about. And like anybody else, they failed to comprehend my logic. I could live and forget about the fact I loved her—but I didn’t want to at all. After all, her ‘death’ was just a prank was it?</p>
<hr/><p>As they prepared me for my euthanasia, I smiled to myself. “Akiteru you better get that phone or I’m haunting you,” I tell my brother as he forces his self to laugh. “Now is not the time Kei,” he says tearing up even more. Everything was sudden of course. We weren’t in a rush at all—but the last time said that I never got to tell her that she was that same girl I talked about.</p><p>
  <i>And at 8:51 PM on May 4, Tsukishima Kei had no heartbeat.</i>
</p><p>Finally, both the firefly and the flower had fallen to the ground.</p>
<hr/><h4>Memories.</h4><p>Meanwhile, in Argentina a packaged had arrived for Oikawa Tooru.</p><p>“Isn’t this my sister’s phone from two years ago?,” he says asking himself upon inspecting the contents of the parcel. It was empty. Nothing in it except for a single message sent 3 months prior on May 4th. He chose not to read it of course but something in him was curious. And so, he opened it.</p><p>
  <i><b>Ichika,</b></i>
</p><p>
  <i>You idiot. You really thought I’d fall for your prank?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Of course, I would. I just pretend not to. I’m in the same situation as you now, apparently.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Ichika. I regret not telling you that you were that girl. Screw me and my so-called perfect timing. It ultimately destroyed everything. I feel guilty for stealing our future together. I feel guilty for having everyone down in the dumps because you’re gone.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I wanted to let you know—two years late—that I love you too. From the start, I did. I didn’t know then but I was sure I did. I should’ve never told you all those things while my headphones were on you. I should’ve told you that day in the library I was amazed by your intelligence. I should’ve told you that you looked cute wearing my coat. I should’ve told you I loved you that day in October. I should’ve told you that I thought you were beautiful. I should’ve told you I was the one that was fussy about your spike. I should’ve told you that I put them on you because I was so afraid you’d leave if you found out I loved you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I always told you that I loved you but why on earth did I choose to drown out my own words with songs?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>But here we are, I guess. It's two years late but I want you to know the girl I talked to you too much about? I never got her to say yes. Because she’s gone. Ichika I don’t know how you didn’t notice yet but all this time I’ve been talking to you, about you. I was a coward for not telling you. I want you to know you’ll never be an afterthought to her because you two are the same person.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Ichika I’m not really sure how to tell you this but I’m sorry. You told me not to blame myself but it was hard not to. I pretended to think you pranked me all this time to hide the fact you died because I never told you things. If only I had told you then, maybe we’d still be here. Maybe we’d be together. So, let me rephrase your letter.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Anyways, I hope you’ll be happy. I hope that we enjoy café dates as much as we did back in high school. I hope you call me every night and remind me how lucky I am to have you. I hope you take me to the moon.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Time and time again, I hope we gain all the things we deserve to have. I hope you tell me everything on your mind—don’t you make me wear earphones then speak when you know I can’t hear your words. I hope that when we both grow older, we’ll achieve more dreams. You’d be great as a staff at the Sendai City museum by the way. Your interest in history and pre-historic things will surely invoke happiness into others. I hope you don’t forget that once in your life you made me the happiest I ever would be.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>But this is the end of our journey. You are assurance. I am assured that we will meet again. We will meet again in whatever form we may take, perhaps I’ll be a firefly in spring when I next meet you. As long as the next time we’re together we see the same sky, feel the same air and gaze at the same moon and stars. Even if time will not set upon us, I'll be fine.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Someday I hope to see you again. Then we’ll build our future together as I planned. I’ll be a museum curator and you’ll be a lawyer. When that comes, I hope we’ll be happier than we ever were in this life. I don’t know how to use my words but I wished I did, and for sure next time—I will.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>This is two years late but I love you with all my heart. I promise to not make flowers bloom from your chest again. Meet me with a smile when the light brown meets the golden brown. I have never lied to myself when it came to you, please know that. But alas, this is where we come to a close. If we were just brave enough to fight for the love we had, maybe we are in each other's arms right now. But in the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Ichika, even if I didn't tell you that I loved you, I had always wished that my eyes were enough to tell you that I did.</i>
</p><p>Tooru dropped the phone crying, unable to read the final lines. The wound in his heart had reopened. So he too was dead. It broke his heart upon remembering the things his sister had been doing when she was alone. She had fought a battle without telling everyone and that felt like a knife in his heart.</p><p>“At least you two might be together now.”</p>
<hr/><p>Tsukishima fluttered his eyes open as he arrived in someplace. It was white everywhere and he felt lost. He walked around until he saw a figure in the distance. It appeared to be human, dressed in white as well. As he got closer he felt a sense of familiarity come over his body as soon as he laid his eyes on her.</p><p>Long brown hair. An averagely tall build. Of course, he’d known it was her.</p><p>He ran to her and then he smiled. He couldn’t bring himself to speak as she stood in front of him. It had been years. As if it unfolded in slow motion, she turned around and the golden-brown met the light brown once again.</p><p>
  <i>Meet me with a smile when the light brown meets the golden brown.</i>
</p><p>Ichika smiled at me. “You kept our promise huh?,” I tell myself as I run towards her. As we meet it felt as if the universe had conspired for this very moment to happen again. I smiled at her as I pulled her into an embrace. “I would have waited longer. Why are you here already?,” she curses me as she buries herself into my chest. “Why else? Of course, I came to see you.”</p><p>
  <i>You are assurance. I am assured that we will meet again.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>At least we met. And hopefully, one day we will again.</i>
</p><p>We stay that way for a few more minutes. I missed her. “I love you,” I say as I feel her tears seep through my shirt. “Took you long enough. Coward,” she teases me as she then begins to nitpick at my letter to her. The theory of the multiverse states that there are infinite parallel universes containing every possible situation. It makes me happy because I know somewhere, we ended up together happy and alive.</p><p>
  <i>“See you when the road decides it’s time for us to be together again, my firefly.”</i>
</p><p>Down on Earth, Tooru had finally gained the courage to read out the last lines. At the same time, Tsukishima told Ichika the same exact words.</p><p>
  <i>“Until next time or maybe in another life, my flower.” </i>
</p><p>The firefly and the flower found each other once more. They were sure that the next time they’d be together they would do everything right in order to end up together.</p><p>And there, this story of how a flower met a firefly ended.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi~</p><p>I hope you enjoyed reading Fireflies in the Spring. I know it isn't the best piece out there, but I wanted to try writing it nonetheless. It was hard to write this knowing I saw myself in Ichika during some scenes. </p><p>Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope one day you find your own assurance as well.</p><p>Tsukishima Kei and Oikawa Ichika are now signing off.</p><p>Started: October 17, 2020<br/>Ended: October 31, 2020</p></blockquote></div></div>
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